Preamble

The House met at Eleven o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — ECONOMIC AFFAIRS

Prices, Incomes and Productivity

Mr. Judd: asked the First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Economic Affairs what progress has been made on plans for a permanent prices, incomes and productivity policy; and whether he will make a statement.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: asked the First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Economic Affairs whether he will now make a statement on the Government's intentions in relation to the prices and incomes policy.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: asked the First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Economic Affairs whether it is now his intention to seek further powers for the regulation of wages and prices when those under Part IV of the Prices and Incomes Act 1966, lapse this summer.

Mr. Gwilym Roberts: asked the First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Economic Affairs what progress he has made in producing a long-term prices, productivity, and incomes policy; and what steps he is taking to ensure adequate control of prices and profits.

Mr. Dickens: asked the First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Economic Affairs if he will make a statement on Her Majesty's Government's proposals on the future development of the prices and incomes policy.

The First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Economic Affairs (Mr. Michael Stewart): I would refer my hon. Friend to my statement yesterday and to the White Paper (Cmnd. 3235).

Mr. Judd: Is my right hon. Friend aware that among most hon. Members there is a conviction that a planned prices, incomes and productivity policy is an essential part of an integrated streamlined economy; that we believe that in a democratic society Government have a rightful part to play in this operation and that this policy must effectively cover the whole range of prices, including rents?

Mr. Stewart: I would not dissent there at all. My hon. Friend will find that there is a section on rents in the White Paper.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: Can we have an assurance that the Government intend to do all they can to maintain this as a voluntary rather than a compulsory policy? Will the Government also give the assurance that they will mend their ways and use the management of the economy as the chief means of keeping prices and wages in relation to productivity and not rely exclusively, or mainly, on the incomes policy?

Mr. Stewart: As to the hon. Gentleman's first point, the Government's view of the desirability of the voluntary element in policy is made quite clear in the White Paper. As to his second point, it has also been made clear that one cannot regard a prices and incomes policy as the sole instrument of economic policy; but I think that there are at least equal dangers in under-estimating its importance and relying on what the hon. Gentleman calls the "management of the economy", which might mean simply trying to get out of difficulties by having widespread unemployment.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Does the First Secretary recall that he justified his incomplete and inadequate statement yesterday by saying that it was necessary so that negotiations could take place? Can he explain how negotiations between employers and workers can effectively take place if neither party knows whether the Government intend to take power to frustrate agreements, as the Government did last summer?

Mr. Stewart: There is no question of taking power to frustrate agreements. Exceptional measures were taken last summer, which it would not be necessary to repeat. The reason why discussion is


still necessary is that it is discussion on what the powers and place of the Government, the trade unions and management should be.

Mr. Roberts: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the majority of us on this side of the House completely accept the Government's operation of the prices and incomes policy and completely reject the jungle society of the party opposite? Is he further aware that we feel that the key to the success of such a policy is firm Government action to control and reduce prices?

Mr. Stewart: I am obliged to my hon. Friend. I think that the view he expresses is very widely shared with the country as a whole. On the latter part of his supplementary question, he will notice the effective action that has been taken on prices so far and what is said particularly about price reductions in the White Paper.

Mr. Dickens: Is my right hon. Friend aware that some of us who have hitherto opposed the Government's prices and incomes policy might support a prices and incomes policy that was concerned with a combined operation designed to secure consistent economic growth with a major income redistribution in society?

Mr. Stewart: That, I think, is what we must work for. In my statement yesterday, I tried to set forth the thesis that the prices and incomes policy had had to mean standstill and severe restraint during these periods, but that that is not its permanent nature. Its permanent nature, combined with other instruments of economic policy, is to bring about the result my hon. Friend has in mind.

Sir J. Langford-Holt: Referring to Question No. 8, may I ask whether there is any pressure which makes it necessary to control prices? Is not the problem today rather more one of industry trying to maintain its profitability?

Mr. Stewart: It is true, of course, that profits have felt the effects of recent events, but I think it is quite certain that one could not hope to exercise an incomes policy effectively if profits could become excessive.
If the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames (Mr. Boyd-Carpenter) will forgive me, I should

like to avoid misunderstanding. He spoke of frustrating agreements, but there is no intention of taking powers to set at nought agreements already made. The question at issue is what sort of agreements ought to be made.

Mr. Mikardo: Why does paragraph 8 of the White Paper propose the lapsing on 30th June of the existing general request for advance notification of price increases? Why is the White Paper in general much more tender and much less direct and effective about prices than about incomes? Will my right hon. Friend accept it from me that we shall start to believe what he says about control of prices when we spend as many evenings in the House debating price control Orders as we have been spending debating wage control Orders?

Mr. Stewart: During the period of standstill and severe restraint there has built up an effective mechanism of notication of price increases between manufacturers, trade associations, and the Government Departments concerned. It will be necessary to make quite certain that the sufficient degree of voluntary notification of prices continues. There are references at the end of the White Paper to the action the Government might have to take in certain circumstances about that. As to the comparative number of price and wage control Orders, I think my hon. Friend will accept that the wisdom with which a policy was being applied could not possibly be measured simply by looking at the comparative number of Orders. I invite my hon. Friend to look at what has happened to the index number of retail prices, which shows that we have exercised an effective and general control.

Mr. David Howell: Further to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr. St. John-Stevas), would not the First Secretary of State agree that if the wages bill is to rise by 6 per cent. this year and if output is likely to rise by only 2 per cent., very considerable other measures will be needed besides prices and incomes policy if stability is to be anything like maintained?

Mr. Stewart: These figures are estimates. They must not be taken as absolutely precise prophecies. I made it clear yesterday that this is a cause for


concern and it involves the need for both firm maintenance of prices and incomes policy and of other measures, particularly the promotion of economic growth.

Mr. Tinn: Is my right hon. Friend aware that many of us who very staunchly supported the Government, in the House and outside, in their prices and incomes policy, while we might accept that the notification of price increases is effective, are not convinced that the control of price increases is yet effective?

Mr. Stewart: If my hon. Friend will look at what has happened and at the figures, I am sure he will agree that there is not ground for much doubt on his part. It is not possible now, as it was in time of war, to exercise an exact price-fixing arrangement over the whole field. It is possible to see that the general level of prices is kept reasonable.

South-West Economic Development Council

Mr. Wingfield Digby: asked the First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Economic Affairs how many Dorset candidates, apart from the nomination of the county council, were considered for membership of the South-West Economic Development Council and rejected.

Mr. M. Stewart: Members of the regional economic planning councils are not selected on a county basis.

Mr. Digby: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that Dorset is not a mere adjunct of the counties to the west and north and has many special affinities with the southern counties? Is he further aware that there is resentment, not only in Dorset but in other counties, about these important appointments and doubt as to whether they are really democratic?

Mr. Stewart: We have a great many nominations for these appointments and we have to make what seems to be the wisest selection. It would be invidious to start giving reasons why some people were selected and others inevitably were not. I think the hon. Gentleman will agree that if we started out by saying that we must select from counties proportionately to population we should not get the best kind of council.

Departmental Efficiency

Mr. Ridley: asked the First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Economic Affairs if outside management consultants have examined the work of his Department.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State, for Economic Affairs (Mr. Harold Lever): No, Sir.

Mr. Ridley: Would not the hon. Gentleman agree upon the vital importance of his Department's setting a very good example where it is pronouncing on over-manning and bad productivity in industry as a whole? If he thinks that the D.E.A. is efficient, which many people do not, would it not be better to prove it by allowing an outside firm to comment upon the level of manning and efficiency within it?

Mr. Lever: The desire to oversee overseers is a respectable antiquity, but the particular method proposed in this case is not appropriate.

Petrol Tax (Increased Prices)

Mr. Paul B. Rose: asked the First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Economic Affairs whether he will take the necessary steps to ensure that those firms which increased their prices due to petrol tax will now reduce them following petrol price reductions.

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr. Frederick Lee): I would refer my hon. Friend to the reply I gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Newport (Mr. Roy Hughes) on 13th March indicating that a watch will be kept on this by the Government Departments concerned.—[Vol. 743, c. 15.]

Mr. Rose: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, if a prices and incomes policy is to succeed, it is essential that cost reductions are carried to the consumer, but that all too often in the past increases in costs have not been absorbed by greater efficiency and productivity but have merely served to increase prices and profits?

Mr. Lee: There is a great deal in what my hon. Friends says. In the criteria set out in the White Paper yesterday we take this point very much into account.

European Economic Community

Mr. Paul B. Rose: asked the First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Economic Affairs whether he will now seek the guidance of regional economic councils on the effect of entry into the European Economic Community upon regional planning and regional policies.

Mr. M. Stewart: At this stage, No, Sir.

Mr. Rose: Is my right hon. Friend aware that those of us who wish to secure acceptable terms for entry into the European Economic Community are still concerned about the effect of this on regional policies? Does not my right hon. Friend agree that it is essential to undertake a survey of the effect which entry would have on peripheral areas such as Scotland, Wales and the north of England?

Mr. Stewart: The question of regional policies has been under consideration. A study of the regional policies pursued in countries already in the European Economic Community shows that theirs and ours have much in common.

Dr. David Owen: Would not my right hon. Friend agree that the regional policies pursued within the Community have been remarkably effective and that this country has quite a lot to learn from the regonal policies within Europe?

Mr. Stewart: This may well be so.

Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: Would not my right hon. Friend also agree that areas like Calabria and Sardegna do not give us any great cause to believe that if we enter the Common Market those of our regions which are suffering from lower wage levels will necessarily benefit to the extent that very highly industrialised areas will?

Mr. Stewart: That is a rather different question. I do not think that I can answer questions about Calabria. I simply repeat that regional policies in certain countries of the Community are a matter of considerable interest to us. We may be able to learn from them, and they make it clear that membership of the Community and regional policies are not incompatible.

Prices and Incomes Board Chairman (Statements)

Mr. Roy Hughes: asked the First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Economic Affairs if he will seek to amend the Prices and Incomes Act, 1966, so as to prevent the Chairman of the National Board for Prices and Incomes from making public statements on controversial matters.

Mr. M. Stewart: No, Sir.

Mr. Hughes: Is my right hon. Friend aware that trade unionists are much concerned about the unfortunate intervention by the Chairman of the National Board for Prices and Incomes in urging permanent legislation to control wages, and this at a time when democratic negotiations were being conducted between the Government and both sides of industry?

Mr. Stewart: The attitude of trade unions and employers to the Board will be determined by the character of the Board's reports. Their character has been very widely recognised. If an attempt were made to impose more limitations than are absolutely necessary on the freedom of people who do public work, we should not get the best service.

Mr. Winnick: Would it not be better for the Chairman of the Board to give fewer public sermons and make a few more fairer reports than the one the Board has been responsible for on drapery workers?

Mr. Stewart: That is a further question.

Mr. David Howell: Surely the First Secretary of State recognises that it is not so much a question of limitations on the Chairman of the Board as of making him and, indeed, the leaders of other outside bodies which the Government have set up accountable to this House and to Parliament?

Mr. Stewart: I do not think this can be so. If moderate government is to be carried on at all, either by this Government or any successor, there must be considerable use of people who will give public service on what the hon. Gentleman refers to as "outside bodies". If they are to be pursued every time they make a speech, we shall not get competent people to do the job.

Mr. Iain Macleod: Does not the Secretary of State think that this Board, and particularly perhaps its Chairman, are in danger of being considered merely as an adjunct of the Government? Does he not think that the work he has put upon them already is quite out of keeping with the Board's composition, with the secretariat, the machinery available to it and so on? Will the right hon. Gentleman in his future legislation take into account the fact that it would be wildly inappropriate to give extra powers to this Board in conjunction, if he is thinking of it, with an extended Part II?

Mr. Stewart: The right hon. Gentleman is on a rather different tack from the previous questioners. It would look even more as if the Board were an adjunct of the Government if I were to attempt to give orders to the Chairman about what speeches he should or should not make. That is exactly the point that I was making.
As to the question of the work that the Board should do, I agree that the range and scope of its work has been increasing and we have got to consider carefully what burdens it can and cannot carry, but I do not think that a wrong decision so far has been made on this point.

Mr. McNamara: Would my right hon. Friend not agree that the nature of the work of the Prices and Incomes Board is that of a quasi-judicial character in its relationship to wage claims and the inquiries that it is making? Therefore, it is most unfortunate that the Chairman of the Board should make statements about extra powers that he feels the Board might need, or even statements which might prejudge issues which come before the Prices and Incomes Board.

Mr. Stewart: This is a matter on which, after all, very large numbers of people have expressed opinions—people in all sorts of positions—and I am reluctant to attempt to impose more restrictions than are absolutely necessary on the freedom to speak of people who do public work.

Local Authority Clerks and Chief Officers (Salaries)

Mr. Pym: asked the First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Economic Affairs when he expects to

receive the Report of the National Board for Prices and Incomes on the claim for increased salaries put forward by the joint negotiating committees for clerks of local authorities and chief officers.

Mr. Frederick Lee: My right hon. Friend does not expect this Report before the middle of this year.

Mr. Pym: Will the Minister agree that this is an urgent matter? Does he not think that it is unfair and unreasonable to deny to chief officers and their deputies any increase in salary when their juniors in local government have been enjoying an increased award since 1st February?

Mr. Lee: Yes, but this reference refers to a very wide range indeed of professional people. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman and the people concerned would rather have a detailed report well worthy of the reference than a hurried one.

Merit Awards

Mr. Roy Hughes: asked the First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, if, in view of the fact that merit awards in industry cause anxiety to all workers, particularly to non-manual workers, inasmuch as they lead to general depressing of wages and salaries, he will give an assurance that Her Majesty's Government will not seek to introduce such a system.

Mr. Frederick Lee: Subject to the requirements of the prices and incomes policy, the extent of such arrangements is for industry itself to determine.

Mr. Hughes: Is my hon. Friend aware that so-called merit awards are used by employers to detract from legitimate trade union claims and to discourage trade union membership, particularly so in the case of non-manual white-collar workers?

Mr. Lee: I have had some dealings with this kind of thing myself. I would not have thought it was true that it in any way militates against the agreements that trade unions negotiate. I know that at times there can be the feeling that one or two people are blue-eyed boys when they get this type of award, but this is not an issue which we should seek to take out of the hands of employers and trade unions.

National Plan

Mr. Lubbock: asked the First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Economic Affairs when he now expects to produce a revised version of the National Plan for the next five years.

Mr. M. Stewart: I have nothing to add to the reply my hon. Friend the Joint Under-Secretary gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield, West (Mr. Lomas) on 23rd February.—[Vol. 741, c. 327.]

Mr. Lubbock: Is it the right hon. Gentleman's intention this winter to have another industrial inquiry similar to the one that was undertaken before the last National Plan? If that is carried out, will he not give industry a fixed target growth rate and seek to develop economic formulæ similar to those which have been introduced by the Central Electricity Generating Board to produce estimates of future electricity demand so that the plans of industry can be adjusted to what the actual growth rate is and not the projection?

Mr. Stewart: Preliminary studies of likely trends in the economy are being carried out and I hope shortly to be able to provide the House with some account of the considerations that arise and the way in which we are approaching the problem, and then to deal with the point which the hon. Member has just raised. Some form of inquiry certainly will be necessary, and we propose to establish, in consultation with industry, how that can best be done.

Mr. Rankin: Is my right hon. Friend aware that regional development and planning, as they are outlined in the National Plan, are not working satisfactorily in Scotland? Will my right hon. Friend take that fact into account and see whether these two proposals can be activated more obviously?

Mr. Stewart: Nobody would dispute that Scotland has its problems, but if my hon. Friend will look at the movement of unemployment figures in Scotland and in the United Kingdom as a whole in recent months, he will see that it would be quite wrong to say that regional policies have not brought any benefit to Scotland.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Does not experience with the last National Plans show that it is quite hopeless to seek to produce such a document unless and until the Government have got a clear and reliable idea of what the rate of economic growth is going to be?

Mr. Stewart: I mentioned that studies are going on about this, and I hope before long to be able to tell the House a little more about it.

Sir Knox Cunningham: Is not the National Plan now dead and done with? How can a corpse be revived?

Mr. Stewart: When the hon. Member says things like that, he only shows how completely out of touch he is with both sides of industry today.

Drapery Workers (Wages)

Mr. Ridley: asked the First Secretary of State and Secretary of State for Economic Affairs if, in view of the difference of opinion between the Drapery Wages Council and the National Board for Prices and Incomes on pay, he intends to make an Order restraining the drapery employers from paying more wages.

Mr. Frederick Lee: The question of use of Part IV of the Prices and Incomes Act does not arise at present. The employers concerned are not under any statutory obligation to pay more. The Wages Council's proposals are under consideration by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour.

Mr. Ridley: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that we have here a statutory council whose duty it is to protect low wage earners in conflict with a non-statutory board's report? In order to make any sense of this situation, he will have to reform the rôle of wages councils if he intends to persevere with his incomes policy in this form. What does he intend to do about it?

Mr. Lee: I do not dispute that there is a point in what the hon. Gentleman says, but the question of this Report by the National Board for Prices and Incomes has been discussed with the employers and unions concerned by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour.

Mr. Winnick: Is my hon. Friend aware of the deep concern which many


people in the labour and trade union movement have about the Board's Report on drapery workers? Would he consider that it is right and just that people who earn just over £13 a week should have no increase? Would members of the Board like to live on that sort of wage?

Mr. Lee: In its Report the Board gives the reasons for its decision. It is a matter of opinion as to whether the decision was right or not, but we should not seek on every report to prejudge whether the criterion that they are using is correct.

Mr. McNamara: Would not my hon. Friend agree that the Board's Report in this case underlines one of the main weaknesses of the White Paper, namely the failure of the Department or of the Board to try to define with more precision what a lower-paid worker is? Until we get this definition we cannot have a successful basis upon which we can build a pyramid of negotiations.

Mr. Lee: I agree that this is a great problem. The complexities of the wage structures are such that we could have people with ostensibly pretty high rates but who, in fact, are lower paid than those whose basic rates are lower than theirs. The Board in two or three of the reports that it has issued, for instance on agriculture and on retail drapery, has given us some lead on what constitutes "lowest paid", but as yet, I agree, we have not got a complete definition.

Oral Answers to Questions — WIRELESS AND TELEVISION

Reception, Shrewsbury

Sir J. Langford-Holt: asked the Postmaster-General what consultations he has had with the British Broadcasting Corporation concerning interference with the reception in Shrewsbury and other places of BBC-1 as a result of sporadic E.

The Assistant Postmaster-General (Mr. Joseph Slater): The Television Advisory Committee, on which the broadcasting authorities are represented, has studied this problem but concluded that there is no short-term solution. However, the duplicate transmissions of BBC-1 and independent television on 625 lines in UHF will not be liable to this interference.

Sir J. Langford-Holt: Will the hon. Gentleman take it from me that reception of television in this county is not satisfactory on the whole, and will he consult the B.B.C. and local authorities with a view to having a booster station put at a suitable place very soon?

Mr. Slater: All this has been before the B.B.C. This sporadic interference, which comes from the Continent, is caused by television stations which are approximately 700 to 1,200 miles away, and the quantity of interference is liable to increase as the number of television stations grows. The suggestion regarding a booster station is under consideration.

Mr. Fowler: rose—

Later—

Mr. Speaker: I apologise for the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Fowler). I did not see him rise on Question No. 22, which concerned Shropshire.

Local Radio Stations

Mr. Gwilym Roberts: asked the Postmaster-General if he will now give the location of the remaining six local radio stations.

Mr. Leadbitter: asked the Postmaster-General how many local authorities applied to be considered to establish local radio stations; how many have made firm applications following the conference with the officials of the British Broadcasting Corporation; and what local authorities have been selected to establish local stations.

The Postmaster-General (Mr. Edward Short): The B.B.C. tells me that 76 towns registered with it varying degrees of interest in the experiment. Eighteen have registered with the Corporation applications for a station. I have already announced the names of the first three places selected to take part in the experiment. The next four stations will be at Brighton, Manchester, Nottingham and Stoke-on-Trent. More time is needed before the locations of the remaining two stations are decided on, because some of the applications require further discussion between the B.B.C. and the local interests concerned.

Mr. Roberts: Will my right hon. Friend tell the House how long the experimental


period for local radio will be so that other areas which have not been brought in either in the four or the next two can look forward to a time when they can be considered again for local radio?

Mr. Short: I expect to be able to evaluate the experiment at the end of about 12 months.

Mr. Tinn: Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind the claims of the new county borough of Tees-side, one of the most rapidly developing areas, and will he postpone his choice until the new county borough has had a chance to make its position clear on the matter?

Mr. Short: I understand my hon. Friend's point of view. I believe that the elections for the new county borough will come in April and the borough will start functioning in May. It may well be May before we can decide on the location of the remaining two stations.

Mr. Berry: When will the Postmaster-General be in a position to tell the House what the local interest of chambers of trade and other bodies will be in the new four stations or even the three he has already announced?

Mr. Short: The hon. Gentleman has some Questions down about that for next week.

Dr. Winstanley: Is the Postmaster-General entirely satisfied that the finance for future maintenance of these new stations will be forthcoming in the areas covered by his announcement?

Mr. Short: That is one of the purposes of the experiment. If we knew that that was assured, we would not need an experiment. It is one of the reasons for having it.

Mr. Rowland: Is it not a fact that, with only two stations to come, there are still some major omissions, notably the Greater London area—where many Members would like at least to be able to hear a station in operation—Scotland and, of course, any rural area?

Mr. Short: This is a nine-station experiment. When we have all the nine, there will still be some omissions.

Oral Answers to Questions — POST OFFICE

Postwomen

Mr. Rowland: asked the Postmaster-General if, pending his examination of proposals that women should be recruited as established postwomen on the same basis as men, he will give parity to women presently employed on this work when considering staffing and establishment.

Mr. Edward Short: I will certainly consider this; but it may not be quite as simple as it looks.

Mr. Rowland: First, can my right hon. Friend say when his review will be completed? Second, does he agree that post-women who have worked satisfactorily for over 20 years, as one of my constituents has, should be treated in the same way as men? Third, if his review produces a satisfactory outcome, may we have an assurance that early reconsideration will then be given to the position of post-women who are now adversely affected by the present regulations?

Mr. Short: On the first point, I cannot say when the review will be completed. On the second, we are considering whether women can be regarded on a permanent basis as suitable for all the duties and attendances which postmen carry out throughout the country, and also whether they can be promoted to supervisory posts in the same way as men.

Parcel Post (Birmingham-Wellington)

Mr. Fowler: asked the Postmaster-General why parcels posted in Birmingham on Monday, 6th March for delivery in the area of Wellington, Shropshire, took five days to reach their destinations.

Mr. Joseph Slater: In all probability, these parcels were delayed by initial difficulties at British Railways' new depot opened recently at Curzon Street, Birmingham. These difficulties have now been overcome. British Railways have expressed regret for any inconvenience caused.

Mr. Fowler: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply, but will he assure the House that if this should recur he will take prompt action to raise the matter with British Railways and ensure that parcels arrive the day after they are posted?

Mr. Slater: Yes, Sir; wherever we receive complaints or protests of this kind, the matter is taken up with British Railways, but one must bear in mind that this was an extensive reorganisation and some teething troubles were expected at the time.

Sir J. Langford-Holt: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that, in addition to the trouble on the parcels service, there has been a deterioration over recent years in the postal services as a whole to Shrewsbury and to Wellington? Will he look into it, as it seems that the service is becoming slower and slower?

Mr. Slater: Yes, Sir.

Postal Services (Antrim)

Sir Knox Cunningham: asked the Postmaster-General if he has examined the evidence supplied to him by the hon. Member for Antrim, South, of complaints made by members of the Antrim Rural District Council with regard to postal services in Antrim; what investigations he has made into this problem; and what action he proposes to take.

Mr. Joseph Slater: I am looking into the complaints the hon. and learned Gentleman has sent and will write to him.

Sir Knox Cunningham: The representatives who made this criticism in public will be grateful for that investigation. Is the hon. Gentleman aware that they are responsible people who gave detailed criticism of the services?

Mr. Slater: Inquiries were started at once, but it was not possible to contact some of the councillors to obtain further information about their complaints. We have this morning received information, and this is now being considered.

Oral Answers to Questions — EDUCATION AND SCIENCE

Teachers' Salaries

Mr. Scott: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science by what authority negotiations on teachers' salaries have been suspended.

Mr. Newens: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will make a statement on the suspension of negotiations on teachers' salaries in

the Burnham Committee pending an announcement of Government policy on incomes after 1st July, 1967.

The Minister of State, Department of Education and Science (Mrs. Shirley Williams): My right hon. Friend told the associations represented on the Burnham Primary and Secondary Committee when he saw them yesterday that, following publication of the Command Paper setting out the Government's incomes policy for the period from 1st July onwards, they could arrange a meeting after Easter in the assurance that the management panel would then be able to respond to the teachers' panel's claim.

Mr. Scott: First, have any other group of people had their negotiations postponed, as opposed to having an award postponed, as a result of the Government's prices and incomes policy? Second, can the hon. Lady say whether, when the negotiations have been completed, the award will be back-dated to 1st April, when the teachers should have had their pay increase?

Mrs. Williams: I cannot answer all the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question without notice, particularly as it relates to all other groups in the community. My knowledge on this subject is not as wide as that.
Negotiations were not broken off by the management panel of the Burnham Committee but were suspended till the Government's incomes policy was known. As regards the question of back payment, the hon. Gentleman will be aware that my right hon. Friend is merely one of the representatives on the management panel, and I could not, therefore, anticipate what decisions will be reached between the management panel and the teachers' panel.

Overseas Students

Mr. Judd: asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what is the general policy of his Department towards the provision of places for overseas students at British universities and centres of higher education.

Mrs. Shirley Williams: My right hon. Friend made his views clear in the debate on 23rd February. The decision on admission of individual students is a matter for the institution concerned.

Mr. Judd: Does my hon. Friend agree that there is an inherent value in an international environment in further education and that recent reports of Ministerial statements have given rise to widespread misgiving that there is a short-sighted and Little Englander attitude towards further education growing in Britain?

Mrs. Williams: I ask my hon. Friend to accept my assurance that there is great sympathy with the concept of a university as having an international function to perform, and I would certainly want to see overseas students contributing greatly to that atmosphere.

Mr. Fowler: Will my hon. Friend prepare a recosting of the cost of overseas students in British universities based on a more realistic assessment than the method at present used of dividing total maintenance costs by the total number of students, which does not give the true marginal cost per student, and will she revise her policy in the light of that?

Mrs. Williams: I shall bear that suggestion in mind.

Mr. McNamara: My hon. Friend will recall that, when the Secretary of State spoke, he referred to vacancies in African and Asian universities which were not taken up by students in those countries. Can she say what research has gone into that and the comparable places available in British universities and technical institutions which are not available in African and Asian institutions, and whether there are—

Mr. Speaker: Order. Supplementary questions, even on the last day, should be brief.

Mrs. Williams: I should need notice to answer that question fully. There has been some indication from overseas university representatives that there are vacancies in undergraduate positions in such universities and institutions, but I think that, broadly speaking, it is postgraduate facilities which, above all, are lacking overseas.

Oral Answers to Questions — MINISTRY OF DEFENCE

Anglo-French Variable Geometry Aircraft

Mr. Dalyell: asked the Secretary of State for Defence whether he will make a statement on his talks with General

Steinhoff on the subject of possible German purchase of an Anglo-French variable geometry aircraft.

The Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Royal Air Force (Mr. Merlyn Rees): General Steinhoff visited in this country firms associated with the AFVG and with the Jaguar and took the opportunity to have talks with the Air Staff also.

Mr. Dalyell: Does not the proposed sale of the AFVG aircraft to the Western Germans face the Soviet Union with the most provocative challenge the West could, in its folly, devise: a nuclear force which includes, and might be dominated by, Western Germany?

Mr. Rees: No, Sir. My hon. Friend should think about it rather as a consideration of the replacement for the F104. Arrangements inside N.A.T.O. have in that case been made satisfactorily over a number of years.

Oral Answers to Questions — SCOTLAND

Petro-Chemical Complex (Invergordon)

Mr. G. Campbell: asked the Secretary of State for Scotland whether the petro-chemical complex proposed by the Highland Development Board in the Invergordon area will be eligible for grants or loans; what agencies are conducting studies and negotiations related to it; whether it is connected with Invergordon Chemical Enterprises Limited; and if he will make a statement.

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. William Ross): I explained in my reply to the hon. Member for Ross and Cromarty (Mr. Alasdair Mackenzie) on 3rd March that no firm proposal has yet been put to the Government. I am not therefore able to say whether any particular proposal that may yet come forward would qualify for assistance.
Feasibility and market studies are meantime being carried out by the American interests concerned (Occidental Petroleum Corporation), and the Highlands and Islands Development Board has commissioned the Holmes Planning Group to undertake an urgent examination of the planning problems which would be involved if the proposal were


to go forward. The Board and Ross and Cromarty County Council has also set up a joint working party to consider matters of common interest. Studies into other aspects of the project are being carried out for the Board by Messrs. Merz and McLellan and by the British Transport Docks Board.
I understand that Invergordon Chemical Enterprises Limited is a party to an agreement with the Occidental Petroleum Corporation relating to the proposal.—[Vol. 742, c. 174–5.]

Mr. Campbell: That was rather a long reply. Will the Minister state definitely whether he is aware of any agreement between the British company named and the American company, Occidental, which is in consultation with the Highlands and Islands Development Board on this matter?

Mr. Ross: If the hon. Gentleman reads my reply, he will see that I tried to meet the points in the Question, and that that Question is answered there.

Mr. Rankin: It has been widely stated in the Press that my right hon. Friend will make a statement on the matter today. Was his reply just now his statement, or can I wait on the statement which I assume will come after Questions?

Mr. Ross: I have undertaken to make a statement, and I shall do so after Questions.

Oral Answers to Questions — RHODESIA

Mr. G. Campbell: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what information he has received about the attitude towards the application of sanctions against Rhodesia of the 50 Governments who, according to the report of the Secretary-General dated 24th February, had not by that date replied to his approach on the subject.

The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. William Rodgers): On 9th of March the Secretary-General circulated an addendum to his report of 21st February which reveals that a further 18 countries have indicated that they have taken or are about to take measures to ensure compliance with the Security Council resolution of 16th December last.

Mr. Campbell: Will the Foreign Secretary make sure that the latest information about this is obtained from the United Nations and made available to the House?

Mr. Rodgers: I think that the information which I have just given is the latest available, and a copy of the addendum to which I referred has already been placed in the Library.

Mr. Whitaker: What is being done to ensure the compliance of Iran and Portugal, whose respective supply and transportation of petrol are crucial to the whole success of the Rhodesian operation?

Mr. Rodgers: The whole matter is going very hopefully at present, and I do not think that any further initiative by Her Majesty's Government would be appropriate for the time being.

Oral Answers to Questions — LAW ON ABORTION

Mr. St. John-Stevas: asked the Prime Minister whether he will recommend the appointment of a Royal Commission to investigate the facts and law in relation to abortion.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Wilson): No, Sir.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: Naturally, I regret that reply. In view of the abhorrence with which millions of citizens of every faith and of none regard the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Bill—

Mr. Speaker: Order. We cannot discuss the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Bill. It is before a Committee.

Mr. St. John-Stevas: May I ask the Prime Minister it he will reconsider that negative decision, in view of the anxieties felt by millions of citizens of all religious faiths and of none, who are deeply concerned about the possibility of having legislation without adequate knowledge of the facts?

The Prime Minister: As the whole House knows—none more than the hon. Gentleman—this is a very important and highly controversial matter, a matter on which the House should be left to come to its own judgment. If, at the end of proceedings which it would clearly be out of order for me to refer to, the House


made its views clear in the sense indicated in the hon. Gentleman's Question, the Government would obviously have to give very close consideration to any such expression. But the House must be free to make its own decision on the matter.

Mr. David Steel: Has the Prime Minister noticed that the demands for a Royal Commission have come only after the introduction of a Bill in this House?

Mr. Speaker: The Bill is before a Committee and the hon. Gentleman cannot refer to it now.

Mr. David Steel: Does the Prime Minister recall that the Birkett Committee before the war found its work hampered by lack of information on illegal abortions, and would not any new inquiry be equally frustrated by that lack?

The Prime Minister: It is not for me at this time to express a view on whether all the facts required are available. The House, which has facilities for discussing the matter, will form its own view on whether it has all the information required, and perhaps on whether a further inquiry could or could not get more information than is at present available.

Oral Answers to Questions — VIETNAM

Mr. Winnick: asked the Prime Minister what further consultations he has had with President Johnson over the Vietnam war.

The Prime Minister: As my hon. Friend will know, I am in continuous contact with President Johnson on this and other matters.

Mr. Winnick: Will my right hon. Friend give us any more information about the background of the correspondence between Washington and Hanoi, and consider continuing to press President Johnson for the bombing to stop and press President Johnson not to listen to evil-minded, war-minded people like Marshal Ky who want the war in Vietnam to escalate?

The Prime Minister: Whilst I do not accept the conclusions in the latter part of my hon. Friend's Question, I am in continuous contact with President Johnson. On the exchange of correspondence,

during the week when Mr. Kosygin was here he and I were naturally fully informed about what was going on, and the activities taken by Her Majesty's Government were in harmony with what was happening in another direction.

Rear-Admiral Morgan Giles: How does the Prime Minister think that we can expect to rely on the help of our allies in the future, as the Defence Review suggests, if we withhold our help from them in Vietnam? [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]

The Prime Minister: The hon. and gallant Gentleman will correct me if I am wrong, but I think that speaking from the opposite Front Bench he advocated that we should intervene in Vietnam with force. If that is the view of the Conservative Opposition, I hope that it will be expressed with authority by all their leading members. We have said clearly on a number of occasions that we do not intend to intervene with force in Vietnam. We have our duties as co-Chairman of the Geneva Conference, which are very important if we are to get what I am sure that the hon. and gallant Gentleman, President Johnson and North Vietnam want, that is, negotiations leading to a lasting peace on the basis of an honourable settlement.

Mr. Philip Noel-Baker: Will my right hon. Friend take into consideration that Hanoi pays great attention to Marshal Ky, since he appears to be in charge of policy in South Vietnam, and will he publicly repudiate the demand for the escalation of the war which Marshal Ky made this week?

The Prime Minister: I have on a number of occasions publicly repudiated every demand for escalation of the war, and that still stands. What Her Majesty's Government have been trying to do over a period of two years is—if we must use these clumsy phrases—to secure the necessary degree of de-escalation to get the parties to the conference table.

Sir H. Legge-Bourke: While not underestimating the importance of preserving our impartiality as a co-Chairman of the Geneva Conference, may I ask the Prime Minister to consider whether the time has not come when some more notable recognition should be given to the United States of our realisation in this country


of the great sacrifices of effort and treasure that the Americans are making in the course of trying to bring about a situation in which self-determination can take place?

Mr. Winnick: Rubbish!

The Prime Minister: In the first place, the Government's position in general has been fully stated. It has never been assumed that the two co-Chairmen remain completely detached above the battle. One is from the East and one from the West, and that has been the most fruitful basis on which we could come together at the right moment and in the right way.
On the point mentioned by the hon. and gallant Gentleman, one of the decisive factors is the strong feelings in the United States, inevitably, because of the loss of their soldiers and other fighting men. One of the difficulties that I found in the week that Mr. Kosygin was here was the fear on the part of North Vietnam of their own fighting men being cut off without support. That is why a great deal of ingenuity was displayed in the diplomatic exchanges to try to remove the fears on both sides and try to develop at least the minimum position of trust necessary to get negotiations going.

Mr. Dickens: asked the Prime Minister if he will make a statement on the prospects for a negotiated settlement of the Vietnam war.

The Prime Minister: We are constantly searching for ways to end the war, but at present I have nothing to add to what I told the House on 13th and 14th of February and to what my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said on 27th February.—[Vol. 741. c. 109; Vol. 741, c. 345; Vol. 742, c. 78.]

Mr. Dickens: Does the Prime Minister agree that there appears to have been a significant switch in the view of the Hanoi Administration as revealed in the recent correspondence between President Ho and President Johnson in that they now seem to be willing to have negotiations without a permanent cessation of the bombing? Will he aproach President Johnson with a view to a further bombing pause of such duration as will enable the North Vietnamese to consult the National Liberation Front in South Vietnam before replying?

The Prime Minister: It is only this week, when the letters had been published by Hanoi, that facts such as those stated by my hon. Friend have come into the general possession of the House. I did not feel it right to say anything about this immediately after Mr. Kosygin's visit. But the situation, even so, is not quite so simple as put forward by my hon. Friend. However, all the relevant considerations here—all that we knew as the result of Mr. Kosygin's visit about the attitude of Hanoi and the United States—were taken into account in the methods and proposals that were deployed during that important week, and it was a great tragedy that they were not able to bring the parties that little bit further that was needed to the conference table.

Sir J. Langford-Holt: Do the Government accept what the right hon. Gentleman said in reply to an earlier Question, namely, that the North Vietnamese Government are anxious for negotiations leading to an honourable settlement?

The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir. I am sure that all the parties to this fighting feel, as do all hon. Members, the urgency of getting a settlement. It is not for me to say what each of them would consider to be an honourable settlement. We know clearly the American position, which has been very fully stated. We know less about the present Hanoi position. But I am satisfied—and the point which my hon. Friend made is proof—that there is a desire in Hanoi, if the right conditions can be created, to get to the conference table and to see whether peace can be achieved.

Oral Answers to Questions — EAST OF SUEZ (COMMITMENTS)

Mr. Dalyell: asked the Prime Minister if he will seek talks with the Heads of Governments of those countries east of Suez where the United Kingdom has responsibilities, with a view to ascertaining to what extent British economic, technical, and military help could be required in those countries in the 1970s.

The Prime Minister: Her Majesty's Government are in close touch with the


Governments of developing countries over aid requirements through normal diplomatic channels and also through various international and intergovernmental bodies and no new initiative by me is called for.

Mr. Dalyell: Is the Prime Minister aware that some of us were very sad that his proposed visit to the East had to be postponed, and that, since the world looks very different as seen from Delhi or Singapore, let alone Djakarta or Rangoon, particularly in relation to the defence needs of Australia, we hope that he will go very soon to the Far East and so on?

The Prime Minister: I very much regretted having to postpone, because of the sittings of the House last autumn, the projected visit to India and Pakistan. It was not intended to involve visits to countries further east. However, as my hon. Friend will be aware, the former Foreign Secretary, the Secretary of State for Defence and the Commonwealth Secretary have extensively visited all the countries that he has in mind.

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: The Prime Minister said that no fresh initiative from here was called for. Does not the end of the Malaysian war provide an opportunity to ask the Malaysian Government to take an initiative in resurrecting Maphilindo and also of consulting Australia and New Zealand about the reformation of S.E.A.T.O.?

The Prime Minister: They are very relevant points, as the right hon. Gentleman is aware. Following the end of confrontation, I had the opportunity of very full discussions with the Prime Minister of Malaysia and the Prime Minister of Singapore on the new issues and opportunities created by the ending of confrontation.
With regard to S.E.A.T.O. and other questions in that area, my right hon. Friend the Commonwealth Secretary has just visited Australia and New Zealand, and the right hon. Gentleman will be aware that there will he a Ministerial meeting of the S.E.A.T.O. Council in Washington next month when all these questions could and, I agree with him, should be considered.

Mr. Rose: Is my right hon. Friend aware that it will become increasingly difficult to justify and sustain our military commitments east of Suez into the 'seventies? Will he consider discussing with the Governments of Malaysia and Singapore the possibility of setting up joint economic development corporations in order to avoid the kind of difficulty that occurred in the Malta situation when troops inevitably had to be withdrawn?

The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend can be assured that one of the things that we have been doing, or could do, to help is promoting better relations between Singapore and Malaysia not only in the economic and industrial sense but also in terms of greater military co-operation.
With regard to the wider question of east of Suez, this has been very fully debated in the House in the past month and my hon. Friend will recall what I said in answer to supplementary questions recently about its being a continuing project of the Government to save resources not only in the total budget but in our overseas expenditure by making the maximum economies and by the review of commitments.
On the last part of the supplementary question, Malta is a lesson that if there are to be withdrawals involving local employment, planning to deal with that must be put in hand at the earliest opportunity.

Oral Answers to Questions — EUROPEAN ECONOMIC COMMUNITY

Mr. Ian Lloyd: asked the Prime Minister whether the proposal made to him by Mr. Kosygin to co-ordinate British and Russian economic planning has been discussed during any of his recent visits to the capitals of the Common Market countries.

Mr. Lloyd: Will the Prime Minister, who must be well aware of how many—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman has not yet had the Prime Minister's answer.

The Prime Minister: No, Sir, but the Governments concerned were informed about it.

Mr. Lloyd: Will the Prime Minister, who must be well aware of how many of the major premises of the philosophy of economic omniscience have been discredited in the Soviet Union and this country, indicate how he will deal with a possible conflict of priorities between the co-ordination with the Gosplan and the co-ordination which must be required in the near future with the Common Market Commission in Brussels?

The Prime Minister: With regard to that spontaneous supplementary question—the hon. Gentleman got off the mark a bit early—while I do not accept the centre part of his spontaneous thinking, naturally the point raised in the latter part of the supplementary question has been considered. The hon. Gentleman can be assured that, while our Common Market friends were fully informed about my talks with Mr. Kosygin, it was not a matter which they thought fit to raise as raising any difficulty about our decision in connection with the Common Market. As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, France, Italy and West Germany have themselves got very extensive, lengthy and far-ranging trade agreements with the Soviet Union, and these do not seem to be incompatible with membership of the E.E.C.

Oral Answers to Questions — UNITED KINGDOM AND RUSSIA (ECONOMIC PLANNING)

Mr. Ian Lloyd: asked the Prime Minister whether he has received any representations from Commonwealth Prime Ministers on the proposals made to him by Mr. Kosygin to co-ordinate British and Russian economic planning.

The Prime Minister: No, Sir.

Mr. Lloyd: Since the Prime Minister must be well aware that the countries that he has just mentioned have trade agreements with the Soviet Union and that many other countries have trade agreements with the Soviet Union, surely there is likely to be serious conflict between the planning requirements linking the British economy and the Soviet economy and the linking of the British economy with the essentially unplanned free enterprise economies of the Commonwealth?

The Prime Minister: I was asked whether I had received any representations. The answer is that I have not received any representations. Although I was aware of some of these things before the Question was put, it does not seem that it is a matter troubling the Commonwealth Prime Ministers. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that we ourselves took the initiative with the Commonwealth countries to see how far their plans—because many of them have important development plans, even in the most laissez-faire economies of the Commonwealth—and their planning arrangements could be fitted in with ours to maximise Commonwealth trade. There has been one meeting of Commonwealth Trade Ministers on this matter and another is due to be held in the near future.

Mr. David Howell: Is the Prime Minister aware that Russian economic planning nowadays lays increasing emphasis on individual incentives? If there is to be any co-ordination, will he ensure that some emphasis is laid on incentives in this country?

The Prime Minister: I am well aware of some of the changes in the theology of Soviet economic planning. What we are talking about in this communiqué relates to the building up of capacity in this country and in the Soviet Union to meet the requirements of the other country. I think that the hon. Gentleman, despite the extravagant views of hon. Gentlemen opposite on this subject, will probably feel that incentives in this country are on the whole a great deal greater than those in the Soviet Union.

Oral Answers to Questions — QUESTIONS TO MINISTERS

Mr. Fortescue: On a point of order. In view of the widespread public concern aroused by the incident referred to in Question No. 34, which was reached this morning and passed over, and in view of the fact that the House is going into recess today, is it appropriate for the Minister to give us an Oral Answer?

Mr. Speaker: It is always possible, but I have had no request on that subject.

Mr. Scott: The Minister is here and he looks as though he is not unwilling to


answer the Question, which raises some important matters.

Mr. Speaker: It is a question not for the Chair but for the Minister.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. For hon. Members merely to point does not enlighten the obvious fact that the Minister is here. I have had no communication from him. Sir Alec Douglas-Home, Business Question

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Sir Alec Douglas-Home: May I ask the Leader of the House to state the business of the House for the first week after the Recess.

The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Richard Crossman): Yes, Sir. The business for the first week after the Easter Adjournment will be as follows:
TUESDAY, 4TH APRIL—Second Reading of the Matrimonial Causes Bill [Lords].
Remaining stages of the Fugitive Offenders Bill.
If there is time, Second Reading of the Superannuation(Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill.
WEDNESDAY, 5TH APRIL-In the morning—
Second Reading of the Commonwealth Settlement Bill and of the Merchant Shipping (Load Lines) Bill.
In the afternoon—
Remaining stages of the Marine &c. (Broadcasting) Offences Bill.
Prayers on the Crown Bedding Co., Birmingham, Road Transport Drivers and on Employees of the Birmingham Corporation, Transport Department.
THURSDAY, 6TH APRIL—Second Reading of the Dangerous Drugs Bill.
FRIDAY, 7TH APRIL—Private Members' Motions.
MONDAY, 10TH APRIL—The proposed business will be:
In the morning—
Remaining stages of the Commonwealth Settlement Bill and of the Merchant Shipping (Load Lines) Bill.
In the afternoon—
Second Reading of the Wireless Telegraphy Bill.

Mr. Lubbock: Is the Leader of the House aware that a very serious and disturbing situation has been revealed by the Report of the Services Committee on the Catering Department? Will he try to find time for a debate on this matter at an early opportunity? Before he does so, will he place in the Library of the House a full copy of the Treasury Catering Adviser's Report, which was submitted to the Services Committee?

Mr. Crossman: I will certainly have discussions through the usual channels about whether we should have a debate. I should not like the hon. Member to press me too hard on the second point before I have consulted my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer about this Report.

Mr. Rose: May I draw my right hon. Friend's attention to Motion No. 478, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Fitt) and 85 of my hon. Friends? In view of the very serious situation caused by the arbitrary use of police powers, especially these powers in Northern Ireland, does my right hon. Friend not think it high time that we had a debate in the House about the effect of the Government of Ireland Act and the delegation of powers to the Northern Ireland Government?

[That this House regrets the convention which prevents hon. Members from questioning the Home Secretary on the activities of so-called Republican Clubs alleged to be carrying on illegal activities by the Northern Ireland Home Secretary; calls upon the Northern Ireland Home Secretary to produce evidence Justifying the banning of these organisations and asks him to take legal action against those individuals alleged to have committed offences or alternatively to revoke his decision; further expresses its concern at the growing arbitrariness of Government action in Northern Ireland; and calls upon Her Majesty's Government to take immediate action to ensure democratic government in the six counties.]

Mr. Crossman: I thank my hon. Friend for bringing my attention to the Motion, which I had seen. It appeared on the Order Paper only this morning and I


should like an opportunity to refer it to my right hon. Friends. As for a debate, I agree that this might be discussed when we have our annual debate on Northern Ireland affairs.

Mr. Fortescue: When can the hon. Member promise the House a debate on immigration procedures, especially at our airports?

Mr. Crossman: I cannot make any promise for the first week after the Easter Adjournment.

Mr. Philip Noel-Baker: When are we likely to have a debate on Vietnam which, in view of recent developments, becomes more and more urgent?

Mr. Crossman: I think that it was in the last business statement that I said that I was hoping to have a debate on foreign affairs—this would include Vietnam—soon after the Adjournment, but I have to be a little careful in giving a firm promise because of our Budget time.

Mr. Carr: Will the Leader of the House promise a statement by the Secretary of State for Defence, immediately we return, about the question of the purchase of F111 aircraft? In view of the further most disturbing reports about the cost and performance of the aircraft, will he ask his right hon. Friend whether he can delay any confirmation of an order until a full report has been made?

Mr. Crossman: I will certainly communicate the right hon. Member's desire to my right hon. Friend on both points.

Mr. Winnick: When are we likely to have a debate on the Select Committee's recommendation on Standing Order No. 9?

Mr. Crossman: We are now preparing for another debate on procedure, one item of which would certainly be that Report. Another item would be the very important new Report on the Finance Bill.

Mr. Buck: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that we have this week had a strongly worded protest from the doyen of the Diplomatic Corps about the treatment of one of his nationals? Does he not think it appropriate that a statement should be made today about this matter,

or, at the latest, as soon as the House has resumed?

Mr. Crossman: I will certainly bring the matter to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary.

Mr. Pavitt: In view of the importance to the Commonwealth of democratic changes in the country of Sierra Leone, may I draw my right hon. Friend's attention to Motion No. 479 and ask for a debate on it?

[That this House congratulates Mr. Siaka Stevens on his appointment as Prime Minister of Sierra Leone; regrets the circumstances which have led to the imposition of martial law so soon after his success; and looks forward to the speedy return of normal conditions and the progress of a new government democratically elected.]

Mr. Crossman: I do not think that I can promise my hon. Friend that we shall have a debate in the first week after the Easter Adjournment, but certainly we will bear it in mind.

Mr. Braine: Will the right hon. Gentleman give an undertaking that immediately we resume after Easter he will make a statement setting out in detail the burden placed by the result of the morning sittings on the servants of the House—the doorkeepers, the police, the catering staff, the Official Reporters? Is he aware that in the last few weeks some doorkeepers have—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member is going into the merits of the matter when he should be asking for a debate.

Mr. Braine: On a point of order. The burden placed on the servants of the House is something dear to every hon. Member.

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member must not misunderstand the Chair. The Chair is probably more sympathetic to the burden placed on the servants of the House at this moment than any other hon. Member. The hon. Member must ask for time for a debate.

Mr. Braine: May I press the Leader of the House to say whether he will make a statement giving in detail the hours that members of the staff of the House are expected to work and what relief he plans for them?

Mr. Crossman: As you said, Mr. Speaker, this matter of the burden on the servants of the House is important. I have called the attention of the House to it more than once. All members of the Services Committee, which has a responsibility to the House for this matter, are very much aware of this problem. Certainly, I can consult the Committee and present a report to the House if that is required.

Mr. Judd: How soon may we expect a debate on the overseas aid and development policies of the Government?

Mr. Crossman: As I said in answer to a previous question, we have the Budget ahead of us and the Finance Bill debates, and I do not think that we can expect that kind of subject to be debated for a week or two after our return from the Adjournment.

Mr. Hastings: Following the point made about the F111, is the Leader of the House aware that this vital decision must be taken before the House will meet again? If there is a question—as I hope there will be—of possible renegotiation of the contract, could he arrange to make a statement today before the House rises, after he has spoken to his right hon. Friend?

Mr. Crossman: I will certainly talk to my right hon. Friend about this, but I do not think it likely from what I know that he will find any further statement necessary, or that there is anything new to say. But I will certainly ask him.

Mr. McNamara: In view of the fact that the Pearson Committee on the Shipping Industry has reported, may I ask whether the Government intend to introduce a Bill, a merchant shipping Bill, this Session or next, and, if so, whether that Bill will cover fishermen, who have not yet had an inquiry into their terms and conditions of employment?

Mr. Crossman: That does not relate to business for the week after the Adjournment, but I will give my right hon. Friend a detailed answer if he asks me to do so.

Mr. Speaker: I remind the House that we are to have a statement and that all this is coming out of private Members' time.

Dr. Winstanley: May I draw attention to Motion 213, calling for a continuation of British Summer Time all the year round? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that many people are hoping that last weekend they altered their clocks for the last time? Will the right hon. Gentleman provide an opportunity for discussion?

[That this House, recognising the success of the experimental extensions to the period of British Summer Time and that reversion to Greenwich Mean Time will unnecessarily hamper commercial communication with Europe, urges Her Majesty's Government to bring Great Britain into line with Europe by adopting British Summer Time, mid-European time, throughout the whole year.]

Mr. Crossman: I am aware of the hope, and aware that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has this seriously in mind, but I have no further statement to make about any decision to legislate.

Mrs. Anne Kerr: Will my right hon. Friend give an assurance that there will be a two-day foreign affairs debate before the Budget is considered and that one day will be devoted to Vietnam?

Mr. Crossman: I cannot give that assurance, for the obvious reason that I have announced the business for the week when we return, and the Budget is in the following week.

Mr. Gwilym Roberts: In view of the uncertainty which is still prevailing in the motor industry, in which workers have been taken on, on the one hand, and laid off in large numbers, on the other, may I ask the Leader of the House, once again, to consider an early debate on this industry?

Mr. Crossman: I will certainly consider the possibility of a debate. I think that things have been improving a good deal in that industry recently, but there would not be a debate before our Budget discussions.

Rear-Admiral Morgan Giles: Will the right hon. Gentleman arrange for an early statement on the subject of the oil pollution of our coasts to be made by whoever is by then responsible?

Mr. Crossman: I am perfectly confident that my right hon. Friend will make


a statement the moment there is further news and that he feels it to be urgent to make a statement to the House.

HIGHLANDS AND ISLANDS DEVELOPMENT BOARD

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. William Ross): With your permission, Mr. Speaker and that of the House, I should like to make a statement about the Highlands and Islands Development Board.
In reply to a question by the hon. Member for Moray and Nairn (Mr. G. Campbell), on 17th March, I undertook to let him have information about the assistance given to businesses in which members of the Board have an interest it I obtained the consent of the businesses concerned. Having obtained that consent I can now give the following details:
On 24th March, 1966, the Board approved a loan of £7,500 to R.T.S. (Potatoes) Ltd., who rent a building from Mr. John C. Robertson.
On 12th May, 1966, the Board approved a building grant of £1,500 and a loan of £23,500 to Polyscot (Polycast) Ltd., of which Mr. Frank Thomson is one of the two principal shareholders.
On 23rd December, 1966, the Board approved a loan of £4,000 to Shetland Knitters Association, in which Mr. Prophet Smith holds 10 £1 shares.
On 26th January, 1967, the Board approved a building grant of £1,687 10s. to Buchan Meat Producers Ltd., in which Mr. Robertson holds 100 £1 shares.
In each of these cases the member concerned declared his interest and I am satisfied that throughout these transactions the Board not only complied with the statutory requirements governing pecuniary interests, but acted fairly and objectively in the discharge of their duties.
Having given this information in the very special circumstances created by the recent spate of innuendo and rumour, I hope I carry both sides of the House with me in emphasising how vital it is to the Board's operations in the field of financial assistance for private industrial and commercial projects that those who come

to the Board for assistance should be able to rely completely on the confidentiality of their dealings with the Board. This is a cardinal principle and it would be nothing short of a tragedy if the splendid work the Board has done and is doing in this important field were to be impaired or frustrated.
I would also like to say something about the Board's examination of the possibilities of petrochemical and associated development in the Invergordon area. Clearly, this could be a highly desirable project and could contribute greatly to the economy of the Highlands. I must emphasise, however, that a great deal of study and investigation will be required before the technical and commercial feasibility of such a major project can be established, and there will be important issues to be considered by the Government.
Various studies and investigations are proceeding, and whether or not the development will prove feasible cannot be decided until these are completed. I must, therefore, make it clear that there has not been, nor can there be at present, any commitment by the Government in this matter.
I now turn to Mr. Frank Thomson's position. When I appointed him to be a part-time member of the Board I was aware of his other activities, including his active desire to encourage a major petrochemical project in the Invergordon area. I accept that in the Board's study and exploration of the possibilities, Mr. Thomson played his part with genuine regard to the well-being of the Highlands.
While he is a member of a partnership which owns Kincraig Farm and House, in the vicinity of Invergordon, he has sought the agreement of his partners to withdraw from it. He is, however, also Chairman of Invergordon Chemical Enterprises Ltd. and in that capacity he has an interest in the petrochemical development should it go ahead. Mr. Thomson told me that, in that event, he would take steps to see that he did not derive any profit from either of these interests; and that he would not take any financial interest in the new enterprise.
But Mr. Thomson was not able to assure me that he would not accept an appointment in the enterprise should it eventuate. In all the circumstances, he has decided that in order to avoid any


possible misunderstanding he should now resign from the Board and I have accepted his resignation. I do so with regret, knowing as I do the enthusiasm, concern and effort that he has put into the development of the Highlands.

Mr. Noble: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his statement, but there are one or two questions which the House would wish him to answer.
First, the right hon. Gentleman has said that the Board approved the various moneys to different people, but did the Secretary of State himself approve proposals which appear to have given more than 10 per cent. of the money paid out by the Board to companies in which Board members were directly involved, those members themselves having been appointed by the Secretary of State?
Secondly, has the right hon. Gentleman satisfied himself that no private commercial benefit accrued to members of the Board as a result of the Board's decision to develop, if possible, a big chemical complex at Invergordon? The right hon. Gentleman's statement seemed to make it clear that Mr. Thomson had considerable interest in this development and that it was his intention to develop his own personal interest as well as that of the Highlands and the Board. He has now resigned, but has his resignation, in the Secretary of State's view, removed the very difficult position that he was clearly to some extent using the taxpayers' money and his position on the Board to develop an interest in which he had, in the past at least, an intention of taking a considerable part?
Thirdly, does not the Secretary of State think that the delay in making this full and frank statement has done serious damage to the reputation of the Board? Was it not the Secretary of State himself who, through his own office, took so long to clear up the whole of this position? Does he not therefore think that, in view of the complex nature of many of these things, it would be wise to publish in a White Paper a full statement of all the documents in this case?

Mr. Dalyell: On a point of order. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Argyll (Mr. Noble) did not mean it, but certainly my understanding of what he said was an innuendo that the Secretary of State himself had some-

how benefited by the appointments. Could this be cleared up?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member must not seek innuendoes, especially when they are not there.

Mr. Ross: I do not think that a White Paper is essential. There has been far too much paper already about this matter. If I asked everyone whether he could swear that he had not seen confidential and private documents which were really the property of the Board, I would get some surprising answers.
As the right hon. Gentleman knows, the Secretary of State's approval is not required—and he will remember his own speech on the Bill—which provided that the Board could act up to an expenditure of £25,000 on its own initiative, except in exceptional cases—when he said that the figure should be at least £50,000 to give the Board freedom, prestige and the like.
It is the Board's job to develop. It was set up to be able to assist in the exploitation of the resources of the area. The right hon. Gentleman should appreciate that in this case the Board is not undertaking the development: it is a private investor, I do not know which, who might or might not do so.
As to the suggestion that the taxpayers' money has been used for a private purpose, the right hon. Gentleman is quite wrong. There must be few members of the Board who have sent in fewer expense accounts than Mr. Thomson. There has been no delay in this respect, and the right hon. Gentleman should appreciate that it would have been quite wrong for me to make any announcement about this last week without the consent of the businesses concerned.

Mr. Willis: Is my right hon. Friend aware that some of us are very seriously concerned at the manner in which certain persons with certain interests have impugned the integrity of members of the Board—who are very good public servants—in their vicious pursuit of Mr. Frank Thomson? Is he also aware that we have been very seriously concerned at the apparent willingness to sabotage the whole conception and idea of the Board in order to carry out this vendetta against Mr. Thomson? Is he also—

Mr. Speaker: Order. Questions must be brief.

Mr. Ross: We all know how they started. No one in this House could agree with, or justify, the leakage of information through someone who had been employed by the Board, but had not given it the loyalty that it merited. There is no doubt of the effect that the attacks upon the Board will have upon its work if they continue. The Board is the first instrument which has shown itself prepared to take action in the Highlands. I ask the House to give support to the Board to ensure that its work goes on at a good rate.

Mr. Stodart: The right hon. Gentleman has agreed that there has been rumour and innuendo, and far too much of it. Will he therefore answer two perfectly straight questions? The first is, did Mr. Frank Thomson have a controlling interest in a travel agency handling the Highland Board's account, and, secondly, can he explain why the firm, Timber Systems Ltd., which is one of Mr. Thomson's, was the only company given a commission by the Board to prepare a possible hotel project, without any other company being allowed to quote?

Mr. Ross: Mr. Thomson does not have a personal interest in the travel agency. It is owned, I think, by a trust. This was the only travel agency in Inverness, and the Board was using the travel agency before he became a member. As to the contract given for the timber houses, I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the Board's idea is to support industries and firms in the Highlands. This firm is in the Highlands, and he should not read too much into this. This was a perfectly suitable and reasonable way of doing this job. The cost in respect of this was about £300.

Mr. Russell Johnston: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that everyone welcomes his unequivocal statement that there has been no improper activity by any member of the Board? None the less, would he agree that the lesson to be drawn from this sorry story is that no Board member should be in a position where he may be suspected by the public of having obtained private gain through public activity? This is particularly true where one has a Board involved in risk enterprise. Would he agree that the lesson is that Board members henceforth

ought to be full-time, and ought to be asked to sever all business connections?

Mr. Ross: I would not accept that. This was debated very fully when the Bill went through. It was in respect of full-time and part-time membership that one important change was made to the Bill. If the hon. Gentleman casts his mind back to the discussion we had, and the speech of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Moray and Nairn (Mr. G. Campbell), he will remember that this was envisaged as one of the possibilities and likelihoods, and it was faced as being inevitable. At that time the Committee and the House took it to be, as I still think, properly covered by the statutory declaration of interest.

Mr. Maclennan: Would my right hon. Friend accept that this statement has cleared the air and has been a great service to the future of the Highlands? Does he agree that the resignation of Mr. Frank Thomson is nothing more than a step to protect the future good name of the Board, and that there is no implication of impropriety which the House can draw from it?

Mr. Speaker: Order. We cannot have long questions.

Mr. Ross: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend that this is to clear the air—I hope that it will clear the air. I would draw the attention of the House to how the air was muddied. To my mind, this is one of the most disgraceful episodes in the Highlands. According to reports I have read, information has been deliberately passed to everyone except Ministers. As to what my hon. Friend said about the imputation, this is perfectly true. Mr. Frank Thomson had declared his interests in these matters which I covered in my statement.

Mr. Alasdair Mackenzie: Would the Secretary of State be assured that his statement, putting the position of the petrochemicals project at Invergordon into perspective, will cause much satisfaction in that area? Will he also ensure that in future people who are intimately concerned in the area will be given adequate information and thus prevent rumour and speculation? Would he also be assured—

Mr. Speaker: Order. Briefly, please. I think that that is enough.

Mr. Ross: The point is essential. People should be adequately and accurately informed, and the source of information has been far from accurate. That is why I went out of my way to stress that there has not been and at this stage can be no Government commitment in respect of this.

Mr. Dewar: Would my right hon. Friend accept that the most useful contribution that could now be made to the work of the Board and the future of the Highlands will be the co-operation of both sides of this House in ensuring that no encouragement is given to any irresponsible element outside the House which might be tempted to continue a useless and stupid witch-hunt upon a gentleman who has now been exonerated by investigation?

Mr. Ross: I entirely agree.

Mr. G. Campbell: Is the Secretary of State aware that my criticism is of him, and not of the Board? Was this not an unwise appointment, an error of judgment on his part, not only because of the known commercial entanglements but also because Mr. Thomson had, shortly beforehand, publicly declared his full support for the Labour Party? Is he aware that this caused a great deal of criticism in the area of a political connection?

Mr. Ross: I can assure the hon. Gentleman that I was not aware of his full support for the Labour Party when I made him a member of the Board. I did not get an indication of that in relation to a "McPuff" campaign which was going on very much earlier, when I was concerned. The hon. Gentleman says that it was an unwise appointment. That is open to everyone to say. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that very few appointments are made which are recognised by everyone as being wise. This particular appointment was praised by the very people now participating in this vendetta.

Mr. Dalyell: When will the feasibility studies at Invergordon finish? May I invite the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Argyll (Mr. Noble) to explain to the House precisely what he meant by his references to appointments—that needs to be explained.

Mr. Speaker: Order. We have dealt with that.

Mr. Ross: I cannot give my hon. Friend accurate information as to when these feasibility studies will be concluded.

Mr. MacArthur: In view of the interest of certain Board members, did the Secretary of State approve these loan and grant arrangements under Section 8 of the Act? If not, should he not have done so? If he did so, was not his judgment wholly wrong? In either case, is not the best protection which he can give the Board to resign himself?

Mr. Ross: I think that that is quite wrong. Part of the criticism of the Act when it was going through Committee— we had better look up the hon. Gentleman's speeches about this—was that I should give the Board as much freedom as possible. I think that I have been able to exercise the right kind of judgment on how it has been conducting its business. There has been a searchlight on a very small part of the Board's work. I hope that when we get the Board's report next month—and, I hope, debate it— we shall get properly into perspective the wonderful work that the Board is doing, which is fully appreciated in all parts of the Highlands.

Mr. Rankin: Would my right hon. Friend agree that if the Highlands are to be properly and fully developed we can no longer rely merely on the supply industries like hydro-electricity, afforestation, and so on, and that development like a petrochemical project at Invergordon is absolutely necessary if the Highlands are to be modernised?

Mr. Ross: I think that we can take it that if the Highlands and Islands Board had ignored the possibilities it would have been under even severer criticism by other people. We must appreciate that there are many people who do not want it to do anything.

Mr. Noble: While Members on both sides of the House are entirely in favour of any development in the Highlands, does not the right hon. Gentleman realise that the question of people whom he has appointed to the Board is very different from the question of the ordinary allocation of money by the Board? In these special cases should not they go to the


Secretary of State for his personal approval, because these are the sort of cases which cause troubles of the kind which we have had? In spite of what the Secretary of State has said today, I feel that in the particular circumstances of the Invergordon chemical enterprise there is a great deal of information which the Secretary of State, I know, has and which, as he said, may have come from a leak sent to the Scottish Office as well as to the Press. [Interruption.] I accept the right hon. Gentleman's assurance, but this is what Members have been told.

Mr. Ross: It is not true.

Mr. Noble: If it is not true, I accept what the right hon. Gentleman says. Since Board documents were involved, is it not wise that they should be published in the form of a White Paper?

Mr. Ross: No. It is quite wrong of the right hon. Gentleman to assume— and I should like to know from where and from whom he got his information— that these pirated documents which have been spread around the Highlands were sent to me or to other Ministers. Did the information come from the sender? The right hon. Gentleman should watch his words very carefully. He should appreciate that the difficulties which have arisen would arise with anybody in the area who was actively engaged in business.
It might well have arisen—and we debated this and considered it—when we were making appointments in relation to the man who went before Mr. Frank Thomson. But I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that we felt that this was covered. This difficulty was faced and discussed fully by the Committee. It felt at that time that it was covered by the Statute.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mi. Speaker: Order. I must protect the business of the day.

Mr. Buck: On a point of order. Would it now be in order if a Minister were to make a request to you, Mr Speaker, to make a statement about a matter which has arisen during this week?

Mr. Speaker: It would not be in order.

Mr. Dalyell: On a point of order. We know that the right hon. Member for Argyll (Mr. Noble) is a very honourable Member for the House. But I am still under the impression, as are some of my hon. Friends, that he made an innuendo against the Secretary of which should be clarified. May he have the opportunity to clarify it?

Mr. Speaker: I heard no such innuendo. Political criticism of the Secretary of State is quite legitimate in the House of Commons.
May I announce what I propose to do about the Adjournment debates? I gave the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Mr. Kenneth Lewis) an hour, and I gave the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. William Price) an hour. I have solved the problem of the time which we have lost by cutting back those two debates to three-quarters of an hour. I hope that hon. Members who have subjects to raise on the Adjournment will keep to the times. I have had the new times posted up in the "No" Lobby.

BILLS PRESENTED

DANGEROUS DRUGS

Bill to provide for the control of drug addiction and to make further provision with respect to drugs, presented by Mr. Roy Jenkins; supported by Mr. Ross, Mr. Crosland, Mr. Kenneth Robinson, Miss Alice Bacon, Mr. Dick Taverne, and Mr. David Ennals; read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Tuesday, 4th April and to be printed. [Bill 222.]

MERCHANT SHIPPING (LOAD LINES)

Bill to make further provision as to load lines and related matters; to increase penalties under certain provisions of the Merchant Shipping Acts 1894 to 1965 relating to passenger steamers; and for purposes connected with the matters aforesaid, presented by Mr. Douglas Jay; supported by Mr. Roy Jenkins, Mr. Ross, Mr. Wedgwood Benn, Mr. George Darling, and Mr. J. P. W. Mallalieu; read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Tuesday, 4th April and to be printed. [Bill 225.]

SUPERANNUATION (MISCELLANEOUS PROVISIONS)

Bill to amend the law relating to pensions and other similar payments to or in respect of persons who have been in certain employment, and for connected purposes, presented by Mr. Niall Mac-Dermot; supported by Mr. Roy Jenkins, Mr. Ross, Mr. Crosland, Mr. Gunter, Mr. Bottomley, and Mr. Kenneth Robinson; read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Tuesday, 4th April and to be printed. [Bill 224.]

ADJOURNMENT

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Gourlay.]

EMPLOYMENT (SHORT-TIME WORK)

12.36 p.m.

Mr. Kenneth Lewis: The subject of this debate— the difficulties of those on short-time working—does not apply to Members of Parliament. Everybody else's working hours go down, but our working hours go up. I am doing some self-imposed overtime. I am glad to do it and to have the opportunity of debating this subject.
In dealing with this matter, it is important and necessary to put certain figures on the record. There are two obvious indications from the employment figures which concern this subject. First, there has been an obvious reduction in overtime working. In 1964, the percentage of people across manufacturing industry who were working overtime was about 34. I will not go through the figures since that date, but they have come progressively down until in January, 1967, 29·8 per cent. only were working overtime.
The number of those on short-time working in May, 1962, was 118,000. That was the highest figure for many years, and it was the only time that the figure went up to that extent. It has been 45,000 since then, but, on average, since 1962, it was only 25,000, until October, November and December of 1966, when the figure rocketed to 176,000. In January this year the figure was 162,000, which is 2·7 of all operatives on short-time working. There is, therefore, a consistent upward trend.
If one looks at the matter from the point of view of industries, we find that in January, 1967, in the metal manufacturing industry there were 26,000 people on short-time working; in the vehicle industry, 42,000; in textiles, 27,000; and in engineering and electrical industries, 11,000. In addition, there has been a considerable increase in the number of workers temporarily stopped. I will not bore the House with any more figures. They are the basis of my case, and I think that they are pretty crushing. The present figure of people temporarily stopped is 10 times as high as it was in 1964. Average earnings are down by 4s. a week. That is the average, which hides considerable other reductions over


a broad field. Average working hours are also down, and they are heavily down over a broad field.
I am concerned about the effect of this. Average male earnings are 110d. per hour; the highest 136d. an hour and the lowest 90d. At the level of average earnings, a man working two hours less will have a loss of about £1 a week. A man on the highest rate of pay per hour will have a loss of about 24s. a week and a man on the lowest rate of pay, who can least afford to lose anything, loses 15s. a week. That is on the assumption that he has a reduction in his normal working week.
If, in addition, a man is dependent on overtime and overtime has been cut out, on an overtime basis of time-and-a-half he can suffer a reduction which is 50 per cent. worse, so that he might be, not £1, but £2 a week down or, on the lowest and middle rates of pay, not 15s., but 30s. or £2 down. Apart from figures, as one goes around the country one sees and hears about the short-time working that exists.
There are three aspects of this matter each of which has a bearing on the economy and arises from Government policy; first, production and productivity; secondly, incomes policy; and thirdly, the social effects on the family First, production and productivity. We will not get increased productivity until we get increased investment, and we cannot get increased investment without confidence.
On Tuesday of this week, the President of the Board of Trade announced a speed-up in distribution of investment grants. This had obviously become necessary because there was a clear lack of confidence in industry, and this must have been obvious to the President of the Board of Trade. Indeed, the Government themselves have predicted that investment will drop this year by something like 10 per cent. According to the Confederation of British Industry, however, the investment drop is more likely to be between 15 and 20 per cent. I am not sure that the Government's predictions are any better than those of Old Moore. I would be inclined to accept the predictions of the C.B.I, as likely to be more correct at the end of the day.
The Government have to recognise that, if production is to be kept up, until we get higher productivity through investment only man-hours can do it. Until the new machinery is installed, only man-hours will give increased output. Short-time working means a lag in production, and if there is a lag in production prices are bound to rise. Whatever the Government may do to hold prices back, they may be effective to a certain extent on the home front but they cannot be effective in keeping down prices for export. Export prices can become higher because, if manufacturers are not allowed to raise their prices in the home market, they must raise them for their overseas products. This can have a considerable worsening effect in our export battle. This is the danger of reduced hours of working.
Yesterday, the Secretary of State for Economic Affairs introduced the new White Paper, "Prices and Incomes Policy After 30th June, 1967", the signposts for the future. I seem to remember something about "Signposts for the Sixties". I do not know what happened to that, but yesterday's White Paper did not seem to be sure which way the signpost would face. It reminds me of when one goes to a road junction and somebody has turned the signpost round the other way: then, one finds oneself on the wrong road. Indeed, the Government have not yet even put up the signpost. They have given us a White Paper but they have left open the options about which way we will turn. We are to hear about this presumably sometime after Easter.
In the White Paper, the Government have taken tentative steps towards recognition of the value, and, indeed, the need, for productivity bargaining. This is acceptable to us but it is rather belated. The Government have had to accept this all along to a certain extent with piecework rates, because increases have arisen from piecework rates despite the incomes policy. The Government's mistake has been that they did not announce a long time ago that they were prepared to encourage productivity agreements. One of the great economic debates during the next few months and years will be whether we need an incomes policy. Incomes are not only a matter of base rates, but a matter of earnings. This is why short-time working affects any incomes policy.
In so far as the Government are trying to get away from complete monolithic bargaining on base rates, I agree with them. We must have base-rate agreements, but they should not be the only content in wages. In so far as the Government are trying to shift some of the negotiation on to the plant level, I support them. If they really believe in this, however, they should have been encouraging productivity agreements at least a year ago.
The present position is that earnings are down over a very wide front. Over part of this front the trend is still down and over part of the front it is static. This is the result of deflationary measures assisted by the stop. But the stop would not have worked without the deflationary measures. Even if the Government had realised that Part IV of the Prices and Incomes Act could work only for a limited period, they should also have realised at the same time that if they had got the economic situation under control earlier, they would not have required Part IV of the Prices and Incomes Act. Short-time working as a result of Government policy—and it is a result of Government policy—is a direct encouragement to base rate upward demand. In so far as it cuts back production, it is also a disadvantage to the economic health of the nation.
What will happen when we get out of the present depressed state, when industry starts moving again, as we hope it will? What part will a prices and incomes policy play then? The Government want a prices and incomes policy as a long stop. We do not know at what position the stop will be held, whether it will be for four months, six months, nine months or a year. The Government say that the T.U.C. voluntary method should be tried, but they have not very much hope that it will work. I must confess to the Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour that I have not very much hope that it will work either.
Suppose, however, that we give it a chance and that in the long term everybody in the House would want to give it a chance. If it works, that will be fine and the Prices and Incomes Board will presumably be out of a job. If, however, as is more likely, the voluntary effort works only partially—I am being

an optimist in supposing that it might work partially; it might not work at all —what then will be the rôle of the Prices and Incomes Board?
I have said that the Government want the Board as a long stop and the Board itself wants to be a long stop. As I see it, however, it ought to be, to continue with cricketing terms, more a slip activity, or a means of hold-up rather than stop. A Prices and Incomes Board as a hold-up procedure on wage claims could be useful—for two reasons, in my opinion. First, because while it is holding up the claim, public opinion can be brought to bear by the investigations of the Board and by the comments made by the Board. Secondly, when the hold-up is taking place on any wage claim employers would be strengthened, again by the comments of the Board, to hold out against any unreasonable demands.
If the economy of the country is right, this is the only function which is required of a Prices and Incomes Board. But first of all we have got to get the economy right. Short-time working as it is at present in the country indicates that the economy clearly is not right.
The White Paper which was produced yesterday asks for redeployment, what it terms "redistribution of manpower". Redeployment is the answer to short-time working and to cuts in hours. But then, what are the Government doing to provide redeployment or redistribution of manpower? We are not getting it. We are not getting it for two reasons, first of all, because retraining opportunities have been too slow to develop, and I think the Government are accepting this slow development instead of giving the push which is required. Secondly, there is a complete lack of incentive given to our best industries. There is a lack of confidence, there is a lack of incentive over a broad field, whether one looks at investment or whether one looks at taxation.
The present situation of short-time working and under-employment is not only bad for the nation from the production point of view but, of course, it is particularly bad socially. Low-paid workers are the worst hit. Low-paid workers more than any other depend on working full hours. Many of them, indeed, depend on overtime. Cuts in hours among them mean that their wages are


so low that they can hardly manage. In addition, they may be hit by the wage stop. A 15s. a week cut to a man earning £9 or £10 a week is the difference between his normal rate with which he pan hardly, but just, cope and the reduced rate which means complete and absolute disaster. A cut of £1 or even slightly more to a man earning £24 a week means he has to make certain economies; but he can manage. So hours of work matter very much to the lower-paid and middle-paid bands of workers.
In the industries most affected at the moment, textiles, boots and shoes, furniture, general engineering, short-time working is causing difficulties which to many people mean they would be hardly much worse off if they were actually unemployed. In vehicles and the auxiliary industries this is probably temporary, but I am not sure that it is temporary in these other fields, and I should like to know from the Minister what he proposes to do to encourage an increase in activity in these other industries where the signs are that stagnation is setting in.
The answer to this problem is very clear, I think. First of all, instead of punitive and selective taxation across the board in industry the Government have got to reduce taxation in order to provide incentives. We want words and not deeds from the Chancellor on 11th April. Instead of discouragement we want encouragement from the Government for industry. Britannia's fork is a very uncomfortable weapon if one is made to sit on it. If it is used for production it can be a means by which everyone gains, from the top right down to the bottom. It is no good pretending that a man at the bottom of the wage scale or salary scale will gain if the man at the top is unduly squeezed.
Easter will soon be upon us, and we look in vain to the Government for Easter eggs. I hope that when we come back after the Easter Recess the Treasury Ministers and the Secretary of State for Economic Affairs and all those Ministers who are concerned with this problem will realise that something must be done about short-time working in industry. There is a clear indication that industry is running below the productive level which the country requires to give us growth. At

the moment growth is static, and only out of growth can the country secure its future prosperity.

12.56 p.m.

Mr. Robert Carr (Milcham): I am sure that we should be grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford (Mr. Kenneth Lewis) for raising this matter as one of the subjects for debate today. I should like just to make a very few points, and to do so briefly, in support of what he has said.
I am sure, first of all, that we would all agree that what the figures which my hon. Friend has been bringing before us show is that the most serious effect is the human effect, the effect on the lives of many thousands of people of the loss of overtime to which they have previously been accustomed; and added to that is the loss for some of their ordinary basic wage, through short-time working and hence the loss of a very substantial part of the earnings to which they have become accustomed and on which they have based the pattern of their lives.
Coupled with that is the fact that we have had the wage freeze. The Government's policy must be making life very hard for many people, and, unfortunately, as my hon. Friend said, those whom it is affecting hardest are those workers who were in the first place very often among the lowest-paid section of our community.
Also coupled with that is the Government's apparent inability, shown again only yesterday, to define in any way what constitutes "the lowest-paid workers" and therefore to provide any criteria on which to justify wage increases to help them in their difficulties. This is a matter on which I think we should press the Government very hard to do better than they have hitherto done.
All these figures reflect the inefficiency of the Government's economic policy. When the Prime Minister came to the House on 20th July one of the great claims which he made, and which he has made on other occasions, was that one of the great objects of the policy was to shake workers out of the less essential industries in order to get them moving into those industries which were more important in the national need.
We on this side of the House are sceptical about the gentlemen in Whitehall


always knowing best which are the most important industries and which are not, but that is another issue. What is clear from the figures is that this idea of redeployment has been nothing but a myth. Had we in fact got a large movement of people from the so-called less essential industries into the big exporting industries something would have been achieved.
But nothing is achieved by putting people on short time, just as nothing is achieved by putting people out of employment. Short time is only one stage less had than unemployment, and the evidence of the figures to which my hon. Friend has drawn attention is that, far from a rapid movement of people from less essential to more essential industries, we have seen short-time working rising to unprecedented levels. That is not only hard on the lives of the people concerned, but bad in the national economic interest.
The figures to which my hon. Friend has drawn attention are an indication of the whole negation of growth in our economy from which we are suffering at the moment. They are the epitome of stagnation. We were invited as a country to "go with Labour". We were told that we must get rid of the old Tory stop-go. At least, in those bad Tory days we had a number of periods of "go", and very fast "go". Never did we have two and a half years of complete stop, as we have had under the present Government.
The moral to be drawn from the figures seems to be that we shall never get a satisfactory incomes policy, never get a permanently satisfactory balance of payments and never get over the problems of many kinds which worry us until we get our overall economic policy right. That involves a whole package of measures, and the great mistake which the Government have been making is to try to depend far too much on one measure, namely, their prices and incomes policy.
An overall economic policy involves a constraint on Government expenditure, and we are getting the reverse. It involves a reform of taxation to give more incentive to individuals and to companies, and we have had a change in the reverse direction. It involves a return to proper investment allowances, because good modernisation of the plant in our factories is one of the keys to higher productivity and lower cost production; yet we have been saddled with a system of

investment incentives under this Government which are much less in total and less effective in kind than when the Conservative Government were in office. It involves the reform of trade union law. It involves the use of tariff policies and a tightening of our attack on restrictive practices, whether by management or labour. All these things must be pursued consistently and simultaneously.
If we were to have from the Government an overall policy which was encouraging growth, competitiveness and modernisation, we should not have the short-time working about which my hon. Friend has spoken. We should not have this abortive and unfair incomes policy about which we heard so much yesterday. The country would be making progress towards a growing richness of life and a growing material richness for our people as a whole.

1.15 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Labour (Mr. Roy Hat-tersley): I want to deal, first, with the points raised by the right hon. Member for Mitcham (Mr. R. Carr) and the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Mr. Kenneth Lewis), which, while not directly related to the problem of short-time working, are obliquely related to it in so much as they refer to labour utilisation and the proper uses of resources.
However, before doing that, may I clear away some of the clouded air which has been caused by the over-use of cricket metaphors, such as the distinction between long stops and slips. The hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford talked as if the Prices and Incomes Board was seen by the Government as a long stop. When references to long stops are made from this Dispatch Box—certainly by Yorkshiremen, who are the people most qualified to use cricket metaphors—they relate to those parts of the prices and incomes policy referred to in paragraphs 36 to 38 of yesterday's White Paper. They are the reserve powers, or the potential reserve powers.
The hon. Gentleman referred to the Prices and Incomes Board as being, in his view, more properly a slip. As I understand the rôle of slips, they are to catch people out, and that is not the rôle of the Prices and Incomes Board. The Government see the Board as having


a much more positive and creative role, and many of the reorganisational proposals for industry which the hon. Gentleman has suggested this morning might be initiated by the deliberations of the Prices and Incomes Board.
I urge the hon. Gentleman to read its Report on productivity agreements. It has nothing to do with deterring a wage claim, and nothing to do directly with holding a prices and incomes policy, but everything to do with a cool, long look at the nature of British industry. As the years go by, that must be increasingly the job of the Prices and Incomes Board.
Secondly, may I refer the hon. Gentleman to Government policy on productivity agreements? He has discovered a reference to productivity agreements in yesterday's White Paper "Prices and Incomes Policy After 30th June, 1967." When the debate is concluded, I hope that he will read the White Papers published in June of last year, in November of last year and even before the statement of 20th July, which have referred constantly to the necessity for promoting productivity agreements, and have enabled those companies and unions which have organised acceptable agreements to make and receive additional payments notwithstanding the requirements of the freeze.
If the hon. Gentleman spent all his late Wednesday nights listening to the recurring debates in the House about the prices and incomes policy and Orders relating thereto, he will understand that from time to time there are complaints that the Government have been over-willing to allow increases on the basis of productivity agreements.
Before I turn to the direct subject of short-time working, may I say a word about its reference to and its application to the lowest-paid workers? We are told constantly that the Government have no conception of what a lowest-paid worker is and that the Government's economic policy has no understanding of and makes no allowance for the needs and problems of the lowest-paid workers. I ask him to understand that it would be arbitrary, impossible and a totally abortive exercise to expect the Government or the Prices and Incomes Board to make a precise, general, absolute and all-embracing definition of what is a lowest-paid worker.
What we have done, with the assistance of the Prices and Incomes Board, is to recognise many groups of people as falling within that category. I refer the hon. Gentleman to the Agricultural Wages Review and the decision by the Government and the Board that people covered by that review were genuine lowest-paid workers. I refer him to considerations about the engineering agreement and the decision that some people covered by that agreement were lowest-paid workers. There are substantial studies from time to time which recognise and diagnose lowest-paid workers when they are seen. There is little more that any Government can do. The question of having an all-embracing definition is impossible.
In the part of his speech which referred directly to the Motion on the Order Paper, the hon. Gentleman drew our attention to two sorts of difficulties caused by short-time working: the difficulties of a personal sort and the difficulties of an economic sort. First of all, there are the difficulties of the man who is no longer working a full week and who is required to live on reduced earnings. He undergoes those difficulties both in terms of uncertainty and of loss of morale and because of a reduction in his standard of living.
The Government in no way minimise the personal problems which have always been associated with short-time working and always will be. The problems are analogous to those of full unemployment, and on some occasions can be felt more severely than those of full unemployment itself. These hardships are a salutary lesson to those people on both sides of the House and outside who continue to advocate a prolonged period of deflation as an alternative to an incomes policy.
One of the objects of the policy is to make sure that, when this present period of unemployment and underemployment has passed, we do not return to that altogether undesirable and unsatisfactory state of affairs, because the Government do not pretend that it is anything other than that—

Mr. R. Carr: During the last two and a half years, have we not had a prolonged period of deflation?

Mr. Hattersley: Of course not. We have had a period of severe deflation


since 20th July. If the right hon. Gentleman looks at the figures up to 20th July, he will see how quickly wage rates were increasing. During the March election, his right hon. Friend went about the country quoting the figures 9:5:1, which was intended to demonstrate that wages had gone up by 9 per cent. during that period. We have certainly had a period of deflation since 20th July, and part of our policy is to make sure that, when we get the economy right this time, it does not have to happen again. 20th July was not simply an exercise in increasing deflation. It was not simply an exercise in solving our economic problems in the way the problems were almost solved in 1961. Whilst one of the objectives of the 20th July measures was a reduction in consumer demand, another essential objective was the redeployment of labour.
I want to make it absolutely clear that, in the Government's view, redeployment of the sort we then advocated, and of the sort we have since encouraged, cannot be achieved, in its fullest sense, if too many employers and unions choose short-time working rather than movement from job to job.
In some industries occasional periodic temporary short-term working may be economically acceptable, but where the Government are promoting or causing a structural change, short-time working is not the answer. My right hon. Friend made this exact point after his meeting with the motor manufacturers and trade unions on 28th September when, after discussing with them the redundancies in the industry, he said that when a firm was reducing its labour force to a more permanent and economic level, redeployment was the answer, but that there were certain circumstances in which short-time working could be desirable in the short term.
He went on to make it quite clear that the ideal solution for which the Government were striving was movement from one firm and one industry to another.

Mr. Kenneth Lewis: Surely it is a question whether employers choose short-time working? If the Government had jobs available for the workers, they would not want short-time working, but would want to move to those new jobs in those industries.

Mr. Hattersley: Time does not allow me to allocate blame. The Government do not seek to allocate blame, but we are trying to encourage men to accept new jobs rather than short-time work. The Government have brought in redundancy payment benefits which encourage men to change jobs without worrying about losing seniority, about the temporary frictions which are bound to be caused when moving from one job to another, and about many of the other problems associated with a change of job. The Government has also brought into operation short-term unemployment benefits, all of which are geared to encourage a man to change his job rather than to stay on working on a short-time basis.
The Government have done more than that. They have made a series of proposals, all of which are now in operation, positively to encourage the retraining which is an essential feature of re-employment. The hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford said that the Government were not doing enough. He said that the programme which the Government had outlined was not being completed, that progress was not being made at the right speed. At some time a learned society will write a thesis on the force of the unsubstantiated assertion in politics, and I am sure the hon. Gentleman's contention this morning may well appear high on its list of reference. It is impossible for the hon. Gentleman to say quite blandly that the Government are not doing enough about retraining and encouraging mobility, and leave it at that. I will remind him of some of the things that the Government are doing.
On 30th November my right hon. Friend announced the largest plans for the increase of industrial training that have ever been announced in the House. He announced plans which were basically to do with training within Government establishments. He outlined the plan for increasing the number of places at Government training centres. I assure the hon. Gentleman and the House that those plans which were then outlined are going ahead on schedule. The targets were very precisely estimated and promises firmly given. Those targets will be reached and those promises kept. The increase in Government training centres and places is going ahead and will be accomplished.
This is an enormous incentive to a man to choose not to work three days a week at his old trade, but to go on very favourable terms, to a Government training centre, and learn a new job which will enable him to work five days a week at a new one.
In addition, there is a vast programme of internal industrial training organised by the training boards which give to specific industries the opportunity to provide for their working people increased basic training. It is bound to make the individual working man more mobile. It is bound to make him more willing and able to accept new techniques in a new firm and apply himself and adapt himself to a new job, rather than stay working for two days, or three days, or three and a half days in his old one.
Having said that, I would not like the House to believe that all these programmes for promoting redevelopment, as an alternative to short-time working, substantiates the theory that short-time working remains serious a problem, as the hon. Gentleman made out. Let me give him some figures.

Mr. R. Carr: The hon. Gentleman mentioned the Government's retraining centre expansion. Is it possible to give any figures as to how much these places are being taken up and whether he is satisfied that the help and incentive given to people to go for retraining are adequate?

Mr. Hattersley: I can give an absolute assurance on that. The first point is that places are being provided. The second is that the demand for them is there. Waiting lists still remain and the demand for people trained is there. There is no question of training people for jobs which are not available afterwards. I visit a Government training centre somewhere every week. I have asked men whether they find the levels of financial help adequate, or if their inadequacy is a deterrent, and on no occasion have I been told that the financial provision prevents or might have prevented them from taking up training places.
Let me turn now to the figures of short-term working. At the time the July measures were announced, short-time working was running at about 0·5 per cent. By November, it had increased to

3·1 per cent. By December, it had decreased to 3 per cent. In January, there was a further reduction, and short-time working is now hardly greater than it was in the early months of 1966. Of course, that is a general figure. There are industries where there are exceptions.
Let us examine those industries and see what is the position. In the motor industry where short-time working invariably receives the most prominence and most publicity, short-time working rose to almost 30 per cent. in October last year. That is a very large figure, and it is in no small part due to the special industrial and economic circumstances that surround that industry. In December, the figure fell to less than 19 per cent. In January, it was a little more than 11 per cent.
The House knows that motor manufacture is traditionally volatile. There were many months over the last three years when short-time working was at or about 10 per cent. Therefore, not only as a Minister, but as a Midlands Member, it gives me great pleasure to remind the House that at this moment short-time working in the motor industry, although we deplore it, is no greater than it has been for many years or many months of our recent economic history.
One of the ways in which we hope to judge the success of the Government's policy is our ability to protect from some of its more severe, though necessary, provisions those parts of the country and those sections of industry which are traditionally prone to unemployment and which traditionally suffer more than some of their industrial competitors. I would mention, as an example, the shipbuilding industry, which, paradoxically, is always beset by short-time working and unemployment, but which, at the same time, should, could and must make a very large contribution towards the economic prosperity and success of this nation.
In the shipbuilding industry short-time working this month is less than it was in July and less than it was a year ago. It is an example of the Government's decision and determination to cushion that sort of industry and that sort of sector against those measures which we thought necessary on 20th July.
I do not run away from the word "deflation". The measures of 20th July were in no small degree deflationary.
They were intended to hold back consumer demand. They were the bitter medicine which the Prime Minister and the Government felt the economy needed.
The sort of figures which I have given the House, and the proposals for retraining and redeployment which I have been able to outline, signify that it was more than simply an exercise in cutting back demand. It was an exercise in cooling down the demand in some industries, but it was also an exercise in making sure that the resources that were thus made available went into export-earning, growth industries, on which the future prosperity of this country depends. It was an exercise which all the economic indicators published over the last month prove to have been a great success.

ROADS (STANFORD-LE-HOPE BYPASS)

1.20 p.m.

Mr. Hugh Delarsy: Early this year I asked the Minister of Transport to receive a deputation from Thurrock Urban District Council about the Stanford-le-Hope bypass. The Joint Parliamentary Secretary replied and, to my surprise and disappointment, refused to meet the deputation. He said that no useful purpose would be served by such a deputation, and that there was a lack of information. My purpose is to show that the deputation would have served a most useful purpose, and that there is a mass of information.
The story begins officially 14 years ago, although plans and preparations had been made for a long time before that. In March, 1953, when Winston Churchill was Prime Minister and Mr. Lennox-Boyd was the Minister of Transport, Thurrock Council made proposals for a bypass so that the heavy tanker traffic from the great oil refineries at Shell-haven, Thameshaven and Coryton would be diverted from the narrow roads and the railway level crossing at Stanford-le-Hope. The Council was told that, because of the restrictions which had been imposed on capital investment, the road would no be built in the immediate future. "Not in the immediate future" was a truly colossal understatement. Fourteen years is a peculiar interpretation of "not in the immediate future".
There followed this long period of restriction on capital investment, but in April, 1958, the Ministry made a pronouncement which rejoiced all those who were concerned. It said that a high priority would be given to the scheme, and that the issue of a grant was being considered. In December of that year the scheme was approved, and a grant was promised. The Council went ahead in its negotiations with the many authorities concerned, always keeping in close contact with the Ministry, and even going to the extent of constructing piers for a bridge over the railway at Stanford-le-Hope.
The negotiations continued, including —and I must insist on this—negotiations with the Ministry, on the details of a flyover. I emphasise this because this is what the delay is largely about now. In March, 1965, the Council formally applied for grant approval of the scheme, estimated then to cost £2,469,000. The Ministry asked for a financial assessment, and this the Council supplied, but in July, 1965, it received a great shock. The Ministry said that, to save money, two very important changes would have to be made. First, there would have to be a single carriageway instead of a dual one in the Manor Way. Secondly, that a roundabout would have to be substituted for a flyover.
The Council was bewildered to hear this, because the entire scheme, including the flyover, had been prepared all along the line with the Ministry's officers. In fact, at one time the Ministry seemed more concerned than anybody else about the flyover. The divisional road engineer not only supported the flyover proposal, but emphasised a more ambitious improvement. He wrote to the Council's engineer on 23rd August, 1962, and said:
It is desirable to utilise the new bypass to serve as much traffic as possible and thereby afford the maximum return for the money invested and the greatest relief to Stanford-le-Hope. A large part of the extra cost involved in this junction will be necessited by raising the bypass above the Southend Road and it would be extravagant to spend this money and not take full advantage of the improvement that can be achieved. In the circumstances, therefore, I do not feel I can recommend approval of a grant for the limited facilities shown …
I would like to know why the Ministry made such a complete volte face, after


not only having accepted the Council's suggestion for the flyover, but wanting it to be enlarged. Why did it want the flyover to disappear altogether and have a roundabout instead?
In November, 1965, a meeting was convened of all the interested parties—the Ministry, local authorities, the police, and the oil companies. The oil companies said that though they would much prefer a flyover, they would reluctantly settle for a roundabout. They complained bitterly at this meeting about the delay, the frustration, and the cost, and of course they had every right to do so. The police insisted that the flyover was essential. Otherwise, they said, the risk of accidents would increase alarmingly. The Council conceded the single carriageway, provided it was so built that later on a dual carriageway could be constructed, but it refused to give way over the flyover, and asked the Minister to receive a deputation. In the circumstances, this seemed a modest and reasonable request, but the reply was that no useful purpose would be served by meeting a deputation, and that further information was required.
The information has been given now over 14 years. There have been numerous surveys, dozens of meetings, and voluminous correspondence, but even so there was a request for further information. The Council's engineer replied on 24th October, 1966, giving eight powerful reasons why the flyover was essential. Even then the request to meet the deputation was refused. I then asked the Ministry to receive a deputation, and my request, too, was refused. I am now asking again, and I hope that I shall get a more satisfactory answer from my hon. Friend this time.
There are two further points which I wish briefly to put to my hon. Friend. I want to tell him and the House just what sort of traffic uses this road. I am referring only to the traffic from the oil refineries. Every day, five days a week, 800 loads of oils—light oils and heavy oils—with an average of 3,000 gallons per load, travel along here. One thus sees what an enormous volume of traffic is involved.
Another interesting point is that all this oil is of great importance to the

Chancellor of the Exchequer, because duty is paid on it. It has been worked out that the amount of duty paid on oil travelling from Stanford-le-Hope per day is nearly £147,000. It has been estimated that the duty payable on these oils in fifteen days would be more than £2,600,000. This sum is far in excess of the total cost of the proposed scheme.
I hope that my hon. Friend will not say, as an argument against me, that the Ministry is already spending a lot of money on roads in Thurrock. I can see from his smile that he intended to do precisely that. The Ministry is spending a lot of money on roads in Thurrock, but it is not doing so out of love and kindness for the people of Thurrock. It is building roads there because the industrial traffic has increased proportionately more than, I think, anywhere else in the country.
I have already spoken of the oil traffic from Stanford-le-Hope, but I can also talk of the traffic passing through Aveley and South Ockendon now enormously increased by the loads coming through the Dartford-Purfleet tunnel. Incidentally, it occurs to me that I once told my hon. Friend about this traffic when I spoke about the North Orbital Road. There are also the cargoes from the Tilbury docks, soon to be increased when the new developments are completed—new developments which will cost about £20 million, and which the Minister of Transport saw for herself about a fortnight ago. The Ministry is building a road there—the docks approach road to Tilbury—and I hope that my hon. Friend will not mention that one either in this debate, because that is a subject I want to take up with him again in the near future, as I am sorry to tell him that, in the opinion of everyone in the district, the Ministry is building the road in the wrong place.
All these new developments are very good for the economy of the nation, but to send all these cargoes trundling along roads built when Thurrock was a rural area is stupid, wasteful and dangerous. Therefore, when I ask my hon. Friend for a bypass at Stanford-le-Hope, with a flyover, I do not seek a benefit merely for the people of Thurrock—although they need such a benefit, and deserve to be relieved of the congestion, the


delays and the dangers—but for something in the national interest. I am asking for a national investment which will pay rich dividends for the nation.
That being so, I hope that my hon. Friend will give us a more satisfactory reply than we have had up to now. Once again I ask him to reconsider his decision, and at least receive a deputation from the Thurrock Council to discuss a matter which is not only important for the people of Thurrock but for the nation as a whole.

1.33 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Transport (Mr. Stephen Swingler): I am glad to have this opportunity to explain to my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Mr. Delargy) and to the House our position in regard to this scheme. In spite of the temptation to exploit the opportunity by advertising the many other things which this progressive Department is doing in Thurrock and other places, I promise my hon. Friend that I will confine myself strictly to the subject he has raised. I do not in any way dispute his references to the past, and I well understand the feeling of urgency that he expresses on behalf of himself and his constituents.
Let me come straight to the point and state our view. We in the Ministry of Transport are agreed that classified road A1014 carries a large volume of heavy traffic through Stanford-le-Hope on its way to and from Coryton and Thames-haven. We, too, wish to see a road of much higher standard to accommodate this traffic adequately, and to direct it from the narrow streets of Stanford-le-Hope. We are also aware that the Thurrock Urban District Council is the highway authority responsible for providing this, and that, because A1014 will be classed as a principal route, it will look to us for a grant of 75 per cent. towards the cost of any improvements.
As my hon. Friend has said, a bypass of Stanford-le-Hope, which is shown in the county development plan, was programmed in 1959 at the then estimated cost of £757,000. At that time it comprised 1¼ miles of single 24-ft. carriageway, commencing with a flyover connection with the A13, 1,100 yards east of the existing A1014-A13 junction; it was to cross the Tilbury-Southend railway, and

join the A1014 east of Stanford-le-Hope 500 yards east of Rainbow Lane. A second carriageway was planned for construction beside the existing A1014 to provide three miles of dual carriageway to Coryton.
In 1961, grant was paid towards the construction of bridge piers costing £22,224, in order to take advantage of the work of electrification on the railway then being carried out. Two years later, in 1963, a grant of £16,668 was given for the advance acquisition of land, but later in the year an application for grant on further land costing over £24,000 was refused pending justification of the cost of the scheme, which had now risen to some £1½ million.
On 1st March, 1965 the Urban District Council of Thurrock submitted forms which showed that the estimated cost had risen to about £2½ million. This was because dual carriageways were proposed for the bypass of Stanford-le-Hope, thus providing for dual carriageways for the entire length of the new road; in addition, grade separation was substituted for a roundabout at the Southend Road, junction and a roundabout at the Corringham Road—A1014 junction.

Mr. Delargy: Is my hon. Friend saying that the roundabout was proposed first, and that the flyover was substituted for the roundabout?

Mr. Swingler: That is how I am advised. I have gone into the history of the matter, and I understand that this is what accounted for this very substantial rise in the cost of a scheme originally estimated at £750,000, which then rose to £1½ million, and then rose again, in 1965, to £2½ million. I understand that this was one of the principal causes for concern.
The D.R.E. discussed these amendments to the scheme with the Urban District Council in the hopes of securing a reduction in cost; and in August, 1966, he suggested that the grade separation at Southend Road which was estimated to cost £320,000 should be omitted, as also should one mile of the second carriageway—from Iron Latch to Coryton—in order to save £136,000.
Thurrock Urban District Council accepted as an interim measure the provision of a single two-lane carriageway


between Iron Latch and Cory ton, but it protested at the proposal to provide a roundabout in place of a flyover at the Southend Road junction.
It was at this stage that I wrote to my hon. Friend resisting his proposal for a deputation, which I will explain in a moment. I would like to make it quite clear that we would have welcomed any discussion over the merits of providing a flyover instead of a roundabout, but at that stage we simply did not have the traffic figures to enable us to make any judgment at all. That was simply and solely why at that stage I said to my hon. Friend that it would not be useful or desirable for a deputation to be received.
The latest position is that the Ministry asked for traffic figures to support the flyover project. These were provided in February of this year in the form of a consultant's report and recommendation on the flyover which we are now examining. I can assure my hon. Friend that when our examination has reached a useful point I shall be fully prepared to meet him and a deputation if it is desired to have a general discussion of the matter. But when this examination is completed we certainly hope to be able to inform Thurrock that the retention of the scheme in the programme, at an estimated cost of £2·36 million, can be agreed, and that we can actively consider issuing grant.
My hon. Friend will, of course, realise that this depends on the results of our examination of the traffic figures and whether they show the necessity for the flyover at the Southend Road junction; but I can say that I have great hopes that my right hon. Friend will be able to make the necessary grant to the Thurrock Council for the whole of the scheme during the coming financial year.

SCOTLAND (FLOOD DAMAGE)

1.40 p.m.

Mr. John Brewis: I am grateful for this opportunity of raising the question of flooding in south-west Scotland. On Monday, 27th February, we had in the south-west of Scotland what have been described as the worst floods for 30 years. It was fortunate that they occurred in the afternoon for, having seen houses flooded five feet deep, I can well imagine that there might have been many casualties if the floods had come up unexpectedly at night. The two counties in Galloway—the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright and Wigtownshire—have a long coastline and in many cases the shore is flat and liable to flooding, although the ground rises steeply behind. Thus, houses and roads are often built within reach of the sea.
The damage on this occasion was extensive and grievous all along the coast. I cannot mention all the towns and villages and much less the individual houses which were affected. Carsethorn, Southerness, Rockcliffe, Kirkcudbright, Creetown, Carseluith, Garlieston, Isle of Whithorn, Port William, Drummore and Port Patrick are only some of the places on the list. My hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Mr. Monro), if he catches your eye, Sir, will no doubt mention many more places in his constituency.
I do not know if the Under-Secretary has ever made a tour in the wake of a disaster like this. I have done so three time in the last eight years. It is a melancholy experience. It is heartbreaking to have one's crops and wallpaper ruined and garden desecrated, although the material damage may be only of the order of £50 or £100. However, when there are scores of houses affected, even this damage may amount to a considerable sum.
I am thinking particularly of some houses which I have seen flooded before. Many houses were damaged much more extensively. I saw a trim little house at Carsethorn on the estuary of the Nith which had been protected by a strong sea wall. The sea had breached the wall, washed away the garden, and undermined the foundations. This property can be restored only, if at all, at great cost.
I want to discuss the damage under three headings—first damage to local authority property. This is mainly damage to roads and bridges, although other property, such as buildings which belong to a local authority, may be affected. Here I should like to pay a tribute to the staff of the county road departments who, two days after the disaster, when I toured the constituency, had already done much urgent remedial work. Neither the Stewartry nor Wigtownshire are rich counties. Both have a long coastline to protect. Will assistance be given to them under the Coast Protection Act, 1949? I understand that under this Act grants are at the discretion of the Scottish Office, and they may vary from 30 per cent. to as high as 80 per cent. Will the Under-Secretary ensure that these counties get the highest grant available?
Perhaps I might ask the Under-Secretary, while I am on the subject, why river boards in England and Wales can get an even higher grant of 85 per cent. for coast protection, whereas in Scotland county councils, which are the only coast protection authorities, are restricted to 80 per cent. and not to 85 per cent., which is available in England and Wales.
I want to ask the Under-Secretary particularly about the damage to harbours and sea defences at places like Garlieston and Isle of Whithorn. Both these harbours are tourist attractions for yachtsmen and summer visitors, but their harbour authorities have virtually no income or commercial activities and no funds available. Six years ago the county council spent several thousand £s on restoring the sea defences which are essential to the safety of these villages. The work has now got to be done all over again. Can the Under-Secretary give an assurance that this work will qualify for full grant under the Coast Protection Act?
In the case of roads, will the remedial work be restricted, on the other hand, to the specific road grants? In the case of class 3 roads, this may be no more than 40 per cent., which seems inadequate. In the case of unclassified roads, I believe that there will be no grant at all.
I turn now to agricultural land. The number of farms affected was, fortunately, not large, but the damage at three of them to my knowledge was very severe. Flats

of Cargen is on the banks of the River Nith, while Arbigland and Mersehead are further down the estuary. In all cases the water had risen over and damaged the flood banks. At Mersehead I found that 114 sheep had been drowned, the farmhouse and farm properties were flooded and that 200 acres of arable land out of a total of about 500 were still under salt water two days later. River and sea banks were destroyed at other farms. At Grange of Cree and neighbouring farms over 500 acres had been lost in this and previous floods. Reinstating and maintaining flood banks is a severe expense.
In the Ross-shire floods in January this year farmers received a grant of 100 per cent. from the Scottish Office towards the repair of the river banks and the removal of silt and debris. The Secretary of State came to Dumfries on 3rd March. He never set foot in Galloway but announced that damage in the South-West would not qualify for similar treatment. Why ever not? I defy any one to say that the damage at Mersehead was less than at any farm in the Highlands. What is the logical difference between a river bank which is damaged, a sea bank, or even an estuarial bank? I would mention that flooding by salt water is far more serious for agricultural land than flooding by fresh water from a river. My hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and myself will need a great deal of convincing that the south-west of Scotland has not been discriminated against in this matter.
I turn, thirdly, to private property. The private individual has suffered most in this flooding. Let me give a few examples. Near Kirkcudbright the road to the lifeboat station has been damaged and will cost £1,000 to repair. It is a private road. Much of this may fall on the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, which is a charity, and on local farmers.
At Isle of Whithorn Mr. McWilliam's grocer's shop had the back shop wall stove in and his stock wasted. Much the same happened to an hotel and another shop in the village. This had happened seven years before. At Port William the main street looked like a battlefield with doors and windows battered in by the waves. At Kippford the private road to about 12 houses in the village was


washed away. It will cost £3,000 to repair. This also happened in the previous floods. At Carsluith the damage to a row of private houses and their approach road was about as bad. The subsoil is undermined and there will be no chance of getting insurance cover against flooding. Yet—this is a strange thing—before 1960 no flooding had taken place in this area in living memory.
These people would like to be sure that everything possible will be done to ensure that this disaster is not repeated. I therefore ask what the Scottish Office is going to do to help. Let us put the matter in perspective. When damage is apprehended only to private beaches in the Scilly Isles, £500,000 is poured out of the national coffers. But then, of course, the Scillies have a distinguished and influential patron in the right hon. Gentleman the Prime Minister. We in southwest Scotland ask for very much less.
What aid can the Scottish Office give? Can the county councils make coast protection schemes which would qualify for grant, even though the part not covered by grant would have to be levied on the individual occupier as betterment? Also those who have suffered damage would like some compensation for their loss. Some of them, as I have said, have suffered more than once. Help was given in the 1960 floods and I believe it amounted to about 70 per cent, of the loss. Will the same be made available again under the present Government?
On 2nd March my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries, some of my other hon. Friends and I tabled a Motion asking for a Scottish national disaster fund. I have been interested to see that since then the idea has been taken up enthusiastically in England by the right hon. Member for Devon, North (Mr. Thorpe) whose constituency has had a similar experience of floods. The idea briefly is that such a fund would be immediately available to help people who have had their homes ravaged. Apart from private benevolence, there are many funds with unused balances. The hon. Member for Devon, North mentioned the "Titanic" disaster fund which was wound up only a short time ago, and a fund for a colliery disaster which took place in 1910, which still has a balance of £200,000. If such sums were handed over to a national

disaster fund, the fund would have a good start without a penny of Government finance. I should like to hear that the Scottish Office will take up and follow this idea for Scotland.
In conclusions, let me emphasise to the Under-Secretary that he must enable precautions to be taken to see that such a disaster does not happen again.

1.52 p.m.

Mr. Hector Monro: I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Galloway (Mr. Brewis) on seizing this opportunity to raise this most distressing subject and also on the very able way in which he has explained the problems of the south-west of Scotland.
There, as the Under-Secretary knows, we have the two constituencies of Galloway and Dumfries. I am glad that my hon. Friend has brought out the anomalies in the provision of Government assistance at the time of a disaster. Dumfriesshire has suffered two disasters in the last six months. Last August, we had the major flood in the River Nith, and last month there was an exceptionally high tide in the Solway. Both were quite exceptional, unexpected and left a train of disaster.
In August, this followed torrential rains and brought the Nith and its tributaries down in high flood. Damage to the roads alone totalled £144,000 and there was untold damage to farms and households. Perhaps the total might not be far short of £200,000, which is almost as much as the damage caused in Ross-shire in December. In this case the Government gave only the normal percentage grants for roads, which left the ratepayers to stump up £65,000 to put the roads back into the order in which they were before. There was no question of improvement. Of course, there was nothing for householders or for the shopkeepers of Kirkconnel who lost a great deal of stock; neither was there anything for private roads, for damage to crops and loss of livestock. All my constituents suffered very severely indeed.
Last month, as my hon. Friend said, we had this quite exceptionally high tide in the Solway, built up by the very strong westerly gales. Again, this was unprecedented and great damage was done to private houses. I have here a list drawn up by the county councils of all the houses


which were damaged. It is heartrending to see how many of the occupiers are retired old-age pensioners, and so on. It is altogether a very tragic example of how this sort of flood very often hits the people who have the least facilities to repair their houses, furniture, carpets and other possessions.
My hon. Friend told the House of the large number of villages and harbours that were seriously affected, and I can do the same. We had much damage at Annan, Kingholm Quay, Glencaple, Powfoot and Browhouses. There was a great deal of damage to houses as well as to amenities like tennis courts and bowling greens which were completely wrecked. In addition, there is the damage to farms and, particularly important —I press the Under-Secretary on this— damage to the salmon fisheries. This damage might have been worse had it not been for the most excellent work by the civil defence organisation that turned out at a moment's notice, by the local authority workers and many other volunteers.
I was pleased that the Secretary of State came to see a part of Dumfriesshire, though only a very small part. I am sorry though that he did not ask the county council officials to show him where the damage had taken place. Those officials were in a far better position to show him the areas that he should have seen, than were those who in fact conducted him around. The officials would have shown him the miles and miles of fencing that had been washed away, the miles of shore and river banking which had been severely damaged, the roads which had disappeared and the wrecked salmon nets which provided much employment in Dumfriesshire.
I myself have seen much of this damage, and I must say that I am not very impressed at this stage by the shore banking repairs which have been undertaken by the Secretary of State's Department. I do not think they are nearly substantial enough. There is also criticism that particularly in the Gretna area these banks will not be ready in time for the next high tides. I have looked at the area around Gretna where many of the smallholdings are owned by the Department of Agriculture. I hope that Department will make a particular effort to see that the damage is repaired as soon as possible.
A particular criticism has been that an important culvert at one farm had not been cleaned out properly by the Department of Agriculture during the last six months. This culvert choked with the flood and caused the loss of 40 sheep. These smallholders all along the Solway coast have lost a substantial number of cattle and sheep. They have also lost the value of the fertilisers and manures that they have put on the fields this year. These fields are littered with debris. A major expense will be required to provide new fencing—not just 100 yards here and there, but literally miles of fencing. I have seen it myself. This fencing will be needed urgently before the summer grazing starts.
I return to the salmon fishery problem. The salmon fishers accept that the stake nets are liable to damage at high tides, and they accept this as an occupational hazard, but the roads to the nets have been completely washed away. The repair of these roads will cost thousands of pounds. One fishery estimates the cost at £3,000 for roads alone. If people do not have roads to the places where the nets are, there is an immediate likelihood of unemployment and severe loss of income for this important industry.
I accept that Ross-shire should have had the help which the Government gave shortly after the floods in December, but I want to know where the difference lies between the flooding of Ross-shire and the flooding in Dumfries and Galloway. Where is the difference between the damage to the Solway and the possible damage to the Isles of Scilly? I have a telegram here from the National Farmers' Union:
Solway as important as Scilly shore. Suggest something done at once".
That is a valid criticism. Why should not we be entitled to the same aid as has been given to Ross-shire and is now being given in the South-West approaches?
I put these specific questions to the Under-Secretary of State. I know what was said by the Secretary of State in his statement after the floods in Ross-shire setting out the financial assistance to be given to people in that area—and very deservedly so; I make no word of criticism about it—but may we in Dumfries and Galloway have 100 per cent, grants for repairing flood and shore banks? This is very important.
Secondly, may we have 100 per cent. grants for the repairing of private roads? There is such a large cost involved here that it is impossible to expect private owners to put the roads back into order on their own. Thirdly, may we have 100 per cent. grants for restoring fields to productive use?
Those three matters are, virtually, covered by the aid which was given to Ross-shire, and I want to make certain that it is available also for Dumfries and Galloway. Further, will the Secretary of State give an additional grant towards fencing? As I have said, miles of fencing have been destroyed in the southwest of Scotland. The sea came rushing across the low-lying ground, six feet deep, and took away the fences absolutely flush with the ground.
Last, what help will be given to the salmon fisheries? This is an important industry, and salmon fishers have suffered a grievous loss. I foresee unemployment in the industry if there is no help for them. I hope that the hon. Gentleman appreciates that salmon fishers are in a special and, perhaps, peculiar position in that they are probably not eligible for agricultural grant. This is why I want to make sure that they are given help in this way. Finally, will the Secretary of State give help to the householders who have lost so much of their belongings?
What is good for one part of Scotland must be good for the whole of Scotland. It appears also to be good for the whole of England if we include the aid to the South-West approaches today. I implore the Under-Secretary of State to give a generous reply this afternoon and say that he will do all in his power to help the people of Dumfries and Galloway who have been hit extremely hard during recent weeks.

2.4 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Norman Buchan): The hon. Members for Galloway (Mr. Brewis) and for Dumfries (Mr. Monro) have raised a matter which we all accept as one of wide concern to themselves and other hon. Members and, very understandably, to many people in other parts of Scotland as well, including not only those affected but even those not affected by

the recent floodings. It is a matter of concern to all.
When natural calamities of this kind affect the lives, homes and livelihood of people in this country, we are all bound to sympathise with those who have suffered, and it is proper that their misfortune should be discussed with sympathy and understanding in the House. The hon. Member for Galloway, in stressing the sense of sympathy which all should feel, asked whether I had seen the aftermath of a disaster of this kind, and he described his own experience. In fact. I have seen the consequences of such a disaster, on a much wider scale than this, when almost the whole of Northern Italy was devastated by floods. I assure him, therefore, that I bring a good deal of personal understanding and sympathy to the matters which he has raised.
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his courtesy in giving me notice of many of the points which he intended to raise. I am confident that at least some of my reply will satisfy him that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has acted promptly, considerately and sympathetically in cases of exceptional hardship.
We have recently witnessed two periods of serious flooding in Scotland in the two areas to which both hon. Gentlemen referred, one in the Highlands last December and one in the South-West at the end of February in the area covered to a large extent by the constituencies of Galloway and Dumfries. On both occasions, the floods presented difficult and urgent problems for the authorities on the spot, both the local authorities and the Government authorities concerned, and, like the hon. Member for Galloway, I take this opportunity to pay a merited tribute to those who worked so hard and so effectively to mitigate the effects of what had happened.
It is in the nature of these events that the first and most clamant call is made on the initiative and resource of the responsible people who are near at hand. In the course of the recent floods, we saw splendid examples of the community spirit at work, fostered by the local authorities and by the people themselves in the area. It is proper that such efforts should be noticed, and I am glad to pay tribute to all those who made them. I am grateful for the opportunity now given to do that today in the House.
The Secretary of State was able to visit both of the areas affected and saw some of the damage at first hand. Both hon. Gentlemen paid tribute to the speed with which my right hon. Friend came up to the south-west of Scotland to see the consequences which they have described, and I am sure that they will agree that the promptness of his visit was ample demonstration of his concern. I remember the hon. Member for Dumfries pressing me, only 24 hours after the flooding, to visit the area. I replied that I would do so if I could. In fact, the Secretary of State himself paid an immediate visit.
Officers from the various departments of the Scottish Office were engaged from the outset in assessing the damage and in coping with the problems it raised, but the Secretary of State and his Department were not the only ones to show concern. For example, the Ministry of Social Security was very quick to respond with supplementary assistance to particular cases of hardship, some of which were of the kind described by hon. Members this afternoon. In the southwest of Scotland, officers of the Ministry of Social Security, who had been warned to be ready for immediate action in situations of this sort, were quickly on the job.
It is an understandable reaction that people who have suffered from floods and similar natural disasters should look to all possible sources of help and compensation, and, above all, to the Government. Naturally, they take the view that what has happened to them has arisen from causes totally outwith their own control, that it disrupts the normal pattern of their life and economy, and they need help in coping with its effects. The hon. Member for Galloway suggested that the Government have failed in some degree in their responsibility towards those who have suffered, and, in particular, he drew a distinction between the Highlands and the south-west of Scotland. I wish, therefore, to put the picture of the Secretary of State's responsibilities in the right perspective.
In arriving at conclusions about the nature and scale of help which can be given in any situation of this kind, the Secretary of State has to keep in mind two main considerations. These are the statutory limitations which govern the ways in which he can make public money

available, and the nature and scale of the damage which has been caused in relation to the area as a whole and its natural pattern of economy. No Government have ever been free simply to meet without question every claim for assistance arising from circumstances of natural emergency. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is in exactly the same position as his predecessors in this respect. Questions of judgment are always involved, and the duty to exercise judgment, however difficult it may be, is inescapable.
On agriculture, I cannot agree with the hon. Member that Government assistance is inadequate. In the case of severe Hooding which occured in Inverncss-shire and Ross and Cromarty in December, we are undertaking the task of restoring the floodbanks and removing silt and debris from the fields in so far as this is necessary to restore agricultural land to productive use.
As the hon. Member said, the full cost of this work will be met by the Government in those areas, except where the damage is wholly or partially covered by insurance or a contribution can be expected from other funds. The total cost in that area—the Highland area— is estimated at about £250,000, and to undertake this is a very real measure of practical help. The work is making good progress with the aid of 22 earth-moving machines—a fleet which I hope will shortly be augmented as other machines become available.
In the case of the South-West, I do not consider that assistance on this altogether exceptional scale is justified. The information I have is that the extent and severity of the damage while it may be serious in some individual cases—the hon. Gentleman raised the question of the farm at Mersehead, about which I shall shortly write to him—is not in any way comparable with that in Inverness-shire and Ross and Cromarty in its magnitude. The total cost of repairing those flood banks which have been damaged in Dumfriesshire and Kirkcudbrightshire is provisionally estimated at about £24,000, of which £7,000 is in respect of my Department's own estates and £5,000 in respect of the Crichton Royal Hospital, both of which will in any case be wholly financed from Exchequer funds.
The damage for which private owners are liable is thus about £12,000, and I do not consider that this is sufficient to justify special measures of the kind which have been taken in the north. The owners concerned will, however, be able to get the normal 50 per cent. grant under the agricultural drainage legislation. Six applications for such grant have already been received and a start of work has been authorised in all of these cases. It has been observed that the total sum involved is considerably less in the South-West than in the North, and it would perhaps be easier to cope with. But the hon. Member cannot have it both ways. He cannot argue that we must both act because the damage is great and because it is relatively small. From the individual's point of view the damage always seems great, but there is a distinction between a situation in which a large section of the economy of an area is affected, and which may call for exceptional measures, and that in which several individuals may suffer loss.
In the first case, the whole community suffers not only in the sense of the total of individual hardships; the total economy is affected by the scale, and the scale brings in a qualitative difference. That is why we should treat as an exceptional situation the considerable damage which was done in the Highland areas, and why I think that it is in a separate category, though the damage and hardship in the individual cases may be every bit as great in the South-West as in the Highlands.
In addition to the standard 50 per cent. drainage grants both in the Highlands and in the South-West, I am ready to assist the restoration of fences and other fixed equipment with the normal 30 per cent. grants under the Farm Improvement Scheme. There is no difference here between the Highlands and the Solway. In the Highlands, 19 applications have been received for such assistance and a start of work authorised in nine urgent cases. The corresponding figures for the South-West are five applications received and one case in which a start has been authorised. Further authorisations may be expected shortly as inspections proceed.
The hon. Member referred to the question of compensation for losses of stock

and crops. Where this was raised in connection with the Highland floods my right hon. Friend made it perfectly clear that the Government could not accept responsibility for such compensation, and this applies equally to the Highlands and the South-West. There are many natural hazards to which livestock and crops are subject—bad harvests, snow storms, and so forth. One thinks of the bad winter for sheep farmers in 1965–66. It would be inequitable to single out flood losses for special treatment.
Local relief funds are sometimes available in such cases. My information is that although there may be one or two individual cases where losses were heavy, they were not substantial taken overall. Five farms have reported losses totalling eight cattle and about 180 sheep, roughly 60 per cent. on the one farm mentioned by the hon. Gentleman, and this is not comparable in scale with the crop and stock losses in Inverness-shire and Ross and Cromarty, which totalled about £40,000.
Nor is it comparable with the situation the hon. Member described around the Scilly Isles, where the problem is not merely the cost of dealing with an event, which in that case would be when the oil reaches the shore; the money is being spent in an effort to prevent the event, and that would be the situation wherever it took place. I should have thought that there is a valid distinction, which, with his usual generosity, the hon. Member would be the first to recognise.

Mr. Brewis: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that there is a need for coast prevention work to prevent the next disaster?

Mr. Buchan: One would want that; I accept that point.
The hon. Gentleman also raised the question of the repair of roads and bridges damaged by flooding. There is provision for special financial assistance for that. In the case of trunk roads, approved repair work is done wholly at Exchequer expense, from trunk road maintenance funds reserved for the purpose. The hon. Member is correct in saying that there are separate grants for Class 1, 2 and 3 roads.
As regards classified roads, if the county council cannot meet the emergency demands from within its normal


allocation of grant for maintenance and minor improvement works, the Secretary of State does his best, within the resources available, to pay extra grant at the rate appropriate to the class of road concerned.
Extra grant payments totalling about £127,000 have already been authorised for the repair of flood and storm damage to classified roads in this financial year: of this figure, over £91,000 related to works carried out in Ayrshire, Dumfriesshire, Lanarkshire, Aberdeenshire and Banffshire following storms of last autumn, and the balance to the flooding which took place in Inverness-shire, Ross and Cromarty, Sutherland and Orkney in December. Over £36,000 has been spent on similar work on trunk roads in Dumfriesshire, Inverness-shire, Ross and Cromarty and Sutherland. Last month's flooding in the South-West caused damage in Kirkcudbrightshire to the A75 Dumfries-Stranraer trunk road and certain classified roads. The necessary repair works have been completed. The cost of repairing the trunk road, which the Government are, of course, meeting, was £2,500, and I am pleased to say an additional grant of £1,358 has been offered to the county council towards the cost of repairing the classified roads, which goes some way to meeting the total cost that the county council face.
The hon. Gentleman raised the question of the unclassified roads. The extra £1,358 given to the county council will have the effect of lowering total costs for that.
I now turn to the more personal aspects of the flooding which were mentioned by both hon. Members. I accept the picture that they painted, and it was good that they should bring to the nation's attention the kind of situation facing individuals. They will not expect me to comment on each of the individual cases.
It has been suggested that the Government ought also to help recompense those individuals and private concerns who have suffered damage to their homes, property and means of livelihood. This is a difficult sector, and one in which any Government are liable to be accused of taking a harsh view. But I was pleased that both hon. Members seemed to be coming to the concept of society needing to care about its problems. If they had

gone any further they might have come over to this side of the House.
The prudent man must be expected to consider, and seek to secure adequate insurance cover against, such eventualities as damage to their homes, property and means of livelihood, and he normally does so. Resisting similar suggestions in 1961, Lord Brooke of Cumnor, then the Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister for Welsh Affairs, said:
Everyone who may have property at risk should in ordinary prudence take his own precautions and should consider the importance of insuring."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 1st August, 1961; Vol. 645, c. 139.]
The insurance companies have said in the past, and around that time as well, that they are prepared on request to provide cover against flood at modest terms to householders and small traders irrespective of the situation of their property.
None of us can ignore the possibility of a sudden misfortune. It is a reasonable view for the Government to take—particularly in areas where standing risk exists—that people should protect themselves against flood as many already do in the case of fire. Nevertheless, there are cases which go beyond this, cases of particular hardship. The Dumfries office of the Ministry of Social Security's Supplementary Benefits Commission was able to help out in individual cases. It met a number of the bills for additional laundry arising from the flooding and paid out money by way of grants for extra fuel for drying out houses, replacement of bedding and so on.
The hon. Gentleman asked about the position of private householders under the Coast Protection Act. Perhaps one provision of the Act should be mentioned here. Section 4(2) provides that a coast protection authority may enter into agreement with an individual for the carrying out by that person or by the authority of any coast protection work which the authority has power to carry out under the Act. I take the point that the hon. Member made about harbours, particularly if any fishery problems are involved. Though we have not had these raised with us, we shall be prepared to look at such matters sympathetically.
The hon. Member raised the question of the percentage grants towards this work, and particularly made the point


in relation to river boards in England of the 85 per cent. grant. The question of payment of Exchequer grant in any case arising under these provisions would have to be dealt with in the light of the circumstances of the particular cases, and they vary, as was quoted, between 30 and 80 per cent. according to the coast protection burden and the authority's rating resources.
The hon. Gentleman is under a misapprehension in supposing that in England Exchequer grants may be as high as 85 per cent. The top limit in England, for various complicated reasons, is 79 per cent.
I have taken the point about river authorities. But we do not have river boards to the same extent in Scotland. We merely have boards to deal with the problem of river pollution. In England, this is not under the Coast Protection Act; it is under the Land Drainage Act, 1930, and the grant may go up to 85 per cent. for work covering both river works and tidal and sea works.
The hon. Gentleman's final main point was about a Scottish National Disaster Fund. This subject has come into prominence recently because of the terrible disaster in Aberfan, our flooding experience and what has happened near the Scilly Isles this week. This matter was discussed in the House during last week by the Leader of the Liberal Party. Whatever attractions the scheme may have—I think it has many attractions—I am not sure that it is necessarily the right answer, partly because the specific situations created by flood and storm vary greatly from one occasion to the next and each calls for a specific solution. No one envisaged the oil tanker situation this week. The hon. Gentleman may agree in the light of what I said earlier that so far the Government have not been ungenerous in the application of specific remedies.
I think that I have covered most of the points raised in general terms.

Mr. Monro: I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's courteous reply, even if it is totally disappointing. Can he explain what help he hopes to give to the salmon fisheries, particularly in regard to their shore banking and private roads?

Mr. Buchan: I have made a note of the hon. Gentleman's point on that, and will write to him about it.
I am sorry that I cannot today give the hon. Members exactly all that they and their constituents want, but I hope that any explanation of what we have done and of how far we can go within existing legislation—by which we, too, are bound—will show that the Government have acted very swiftly, and that it will satisfy hon. Members.
Once more, I should like to take the opportunity to express my sympathy with those who have suffered. I thank the hon. Member for Galloway for raising the matter and for the courtesy he extended to me in giving me notice of so many of the specific points that he wanted to raise. On behalf of us all, I would also express our thanks to the local authorities, Government officials and others who have acted so swiftly to alleviate immediate loss and hardship.

SCHOOL BOOKS

2.25 p.m.

Mr. Philip Goodhart: I think that every Minister during the course of his career at the Department of Education and Science has at some time or other acknowledged the prime importance of school books. Indeed, one of the Department's own most recent publications gives its approval to the dictum:
The greatest benefit to learners after the master is a good library.
But when it comes to expenditure, anyone who believed that textbooks received a financial status in educational expenditure that compared with the lip-service which we normally pay them would be very wide of the mark. Less than 1 per cent. of our national educational budget is devoted to books. We spend 12 times as much on school meals as we do on school books, and although we constantly talk about the importance of science in the schools we spend far more of our educational budget on cabbage and brussels sprouts than on scientific books.
I quickly agree that the situation has improved in recent years. Between 1955 and 1966, the last year for which figures are available, expenditure on school books quadrupled. But there are still tremendous variations between areas. As


the magazine New Society pointed out recently:
The provision of school books and equipment is the most local and variable aspect of State education … variations from area to area are not only wide but are spread unevenly over the scale of excellence from reasonable to horrid.
As the Plowden Committee, whose Report we recently discussed, said in paragraph 1112:
There is a wide disparity between local authorities. In some areas allowances are so low that the educational opportunities of the children are impoverished. In one area, for example, the capitation allowance for infant and nursery schools is 23s. from which consumable materials, books, including library books, apparatus and equipment must be bought. Help is given for the purchase of physical education equipment and large toys, but not automatically, and parents are not encouraged to help raise money. Not surprisingly, this authority in 1961–62 fell short by one third of what the Publishers Association in their Report on expenditure on books in maintained schools, which was endorsed by the Association of Education Committees, considered to be a reasonable rather than a good level of expenditure on books. This is not an isolated example. Head teachers in such areas need to be exceptionally enterprising and skilled in improvisation if their schools are to be even adequately equipped. Not all head teachers used their initiative in this way. Some in all areas persistently fail to spend their allowance even when the allowance is not generous and many believe that there is merit in practising such an economy.
In fact, the present situation is rather worse than the Plowden Committee has indicated. Obviously, the price of books like everything else, has been going up fairly steadily in recent years, and there is no real prospect of this trend being halted or reversed. It has been estimated by the publishing trade that between 1958 and 1964 book prices increased by 33 per cent. Text book prices went up by rather less. But it was plain that the old guideline of expenditure on textbooks approved by the Association of Education Committees in 1961 was out of date.
In 1964 a joint study group, under Sir William Alexander, of the Association of Education Committees, and Mr. Morpurgo, reviewed the situation in view of the increased cost of books, and the many new developments in printing and visual aids, and in our concept of using books in schools. On 25th March, 1965, the Association issued its new guidelines. No one could say that it took an extravagant stand.
It suggested that in primary schools a good or a generous authority would spend 26s. 6d. per pupil per year on books, while the minimum acceptable allowance would be 21s. 6d., on books alone. In secondary schools with pupils aged up to 16, the standard for books alone would again be 45s. and 40s. respectively. The Association went on to say:
In making these recommendations we think it important to draw the attention of the education committees to the relatively small proportion of the total expenditure on the educational service which is involved under this heading. It seems to us vitally important to recognise that the very large expenditure incurred in the provision of buildings and major equipment, and the salaries of teachers, may well not secure its full return unless there is an adequate expenditure on books and stationery which are the essential instruments for education. The recommendations which we now make have a very limited effect on the total expenditure on the education service, and we believe would yield very adequate returns in the improved efficiency of the schools.
The great majority of education committees certainly try to follow these recommendations. The latest figures produced by the Institute of Municipal Treasurers covering 1965–66 show, unfortunately, that in my own Borough of Bromley it has not quite reached a reasonable standard. It shows that the Borough of Southampton, in which you have a considerable interest, Mr. Speaker—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not pray in aid Mr. Speaker, especially on matters of education, when he might be tempted.

Mr. Goodhart: I will pass rapidly from Southampton, noting with regret that it has not yet reached the standard of the Association of Education Committees for primary schools. The record of some authorities is frankly disgraceful. There are four local education authorities, Barnsley, Swansea and the Greater London Boroughs of Ealing and Redbridge, which in 1965–66 have been spending less than half the approved reasonable standard on primary and secondary schools.
Maybe these authorities are too incompetent to fill in the returns properly, but it certainly looks as though Barnsley, Swansea, Ealing and Redbridge are imposing unnecessary handicaps on the


children in their care. The Borough of Ealing's education committee has recently been involved in acrimonious controversy and correspondence over secondary reorganisation. It was argued that it was trying to cheat the parents, and it certainly looks as though it is trying to cheat the children.
The Ealing education committee has the worst record in the country on this count. What do the Government intend to do? The Plowden Committee made three recommendations. The first was that local education committees should take steps to remove the inequalities which it described and to bring up all allowances to the average figure, without reducing the more generous allowances. It pointed out that it would cost between £500,000 and £1 million a year. Secondly, it recommended that the schools with special difficulties should have extra allowances. Thirdly, it said that although bulk buying of some items may be sensible head teachers should be given more freedom in spending.
I find these recommendations disappointing, because they merely point to desirable ends without saying how they should be achieved. The Government should act swiftly to increase the allowances made for books and equipment in the priority areas. For instance, many of the areas plainly contain a high concentration of immigrant children. A whole series of new textbooks has recently been produced to help these children and this could be an important step forward. Everyone will be frustrated however if the priority areas cannot afford the new series. This is really a matter of encouraging the laggards. Here the main weapon must be the inspectorate. The inspectorate takes account of the supply of school books in assessing a school's efficiency but, as one authority remarked to me a few days ago, this is largely done by ear and eye. Her Majesty's Inspectorate should be encouraged to look at and report on the supply of books in considerably more precise terms than appears to be the case.
The other main weapon against the laggards should be publicity and public condemnation. This is one reason why I have referred to the four authorities which have not even come half way to a reasonable standard. We need better

statistics here, and the Government should take responsibility for the supply of them. Why should it be left to the Institute of Municipal Treasurers to prepare the only relevant statistics for England and Wales?
When we come to deal with Scotland and Northern Ireland we find that there are no statistics readily available. I cannot understand why this should be so. When I used to press in the early 1960s for the Government to acquire and distribute more information on this subject, Ministers, from my own party I am afraid, used to try to pretend that I was asking for a vast range of complex information. The information needed is really quite simple. If the Minister would care to discuss the matter with experts such as Mr. Morpurgo, she would find that it could be arranged very simply indeed.
In those days, a number of hon. Members opposite who have now become Ministers used to support my plea that there should be a far more positive approach by the Government and more Governmental responsibility for collecting and spreading information. They have now been Ministers for almost 30 months, but nothing has so far happened in this respect.
There are no profound ideological or partisan splits on this issue, but there is one point which is worth noting. In every other respect the discrepancy between State school and private school spending is not so much. In the purchase of food or buildings or the payment of the salaries of teachers, the discrepancy between the private and the public sector is not all that large, because the private sector cannot afford it. But there is a tremendous discrepancy between the private and the State sector in spending on books.
There is also a tremendous discrepancy between different public and different preparatory schools. The record of bad public and bad "prep" schools is very bad, but a recent survey of public school expenditure on books showed that on average it is four times as large as the comparable expenditure in local grammar schools and that some public schools spend nine times as much on books as do local grammar schools. In "prep" schools the expenditure on books on average will be four times as great as it


is in State primary schools. Perhaps those who prattle on about the unfairness of having a private sector in education would do well to ponder those figures, because it would not take long to eliminate the glaring discrepancy between State and private education.
Will the money be forthcoming? Clearly, it will not. The Minister must know that, unfortunately, there is profound anxiety about the Government's attitude in this respect. There is a feeling that they will acquiesce in an economic squeeze on the supply of hooks and equipment. As Sir Ronald Gould said in a letter to The Times this morning:
Already the local authorities are having to make cuts in their spendings on equipment, for the capitation allowance is one of the items of educational expenditure which they can cut back.
He went on to say:
If the Government are serious about increasing productivity and using our scarce teaching resources to the fullest extent possible, then they must increase the volume of books and teaching aids available.
This brief Adjournment debate gives the Minister a chance to allay these genuine fears about the Government's attitude and to tell the House what action the Government propose to take to prevent the economic squeeze from falling on this vital sector of education.
Quite rightly, we spend hundreds of millions of pounds on our teachers. If we doubled that sum overnight, we could not guarantee that every child in the country would have a good teacher. But a comparatively small sum would ensure that within the next few months every child in the country could have decent textbooks.

2.45 p.m.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: I must confess to a little sympathy with what the hon. Member for Beckenham (Mr. Goodhart) has said about the activities of some of us when we were on the Opposition benches. Part of my reason for speaking this afternoon is that I remember very well trying to chide the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Sir E. Boyle) on this and perhaps closely related subjects, and that I think that that process should be continued.
I was also sensitive to what the hon. Gentleman said about Scottish and Irish

statistics. Certainly, in Scotland we want to know why there are these variations between local authorities. I appreciate that my hon. Friend has no responsibility, but I should like her to explain, or to give the Ministry's thinking about, why these variations exist. In a previous incarnation, I was the director of studies on a ship's school and in that capacity I came into contact with many teachers and education officers from various authorities throughout Britain, and I found that the variations were extremely marked. It was with some justice that teachers used to complain that the attitude of their local education authorities was reflected in the schools, for this is an important subject.
I have a very simple and deep belief that pupils should be encouraged in the habits of book ownership. Philosophically, one might not be too keen on the idea of possession, but in the matter of books possession is extremely important and it is important to inculcate the habits of possession when pupils are young. I do not want to be unrealistic, but in future, perhaps when the financial situation is a little eased, the Ministry might begin to think about whether it would be possible to allow pupils, say over 16, who are staying on at school a certain form of book token allowance, of perhaps a very modest sum to start with, so as to get them into the habit of book ownership. Perhaps the Ministry might think about the realism or otherwise of such a project.
The next matter is the value of school books in relation to the work of the Ministry of Overseas Development. I am very glad to note the good things which the Government are doing for the Teachers' Training College at Singapore and the help which we are giving to Malaysia in this matter. I hope that it will be noted and encouraged and that some of the help which we give will be in the form of simple school text books. This is one way in which we can meaningfully contribute to the stability of South-East Asia in a major way.
My third subject is that of sixth-form libraries. As one whose main interest in the House is science and technology, as I go around I see that books suitable and necessary to sixth form pupils are nowadays becoming ever more expensive at a fantastic rate. Whereas many pupils


could previously afford the books necessary to them, that is no longer so, because of the rise in the price of books. It is, therefore, all the more important that libraries in schools where pupils stay on to 18 should be properly provided.
I should like to know whether my hon. Friend conceives this to be as serious a problem as I do. What is being done to purchase for school libraries these highly expensive, though necessary, scientific textbooks? Could some kind of bulk ordering arrangement be worked out with publishers, so that before putting a price tag on a particular volume, they would have a guarantee that it would have a certain sale? My hon. Friend will agree that in this matter the economies of scale are very important.
So, too, as I know as one who has undertaken the burdens of authorship, are the rights of authors. In this country, authors, even those of school textbooks who are probably better off than the authors of other books, are not sufficiently safeguarded. Their work is not properly rewarded.
Finally, if this country goes into a European Common Market and a European Community, there will be scope for a great many text books of a rather new kind. I ask my hon. Friend whether the Department have given any thought to this possibility and whether she considers it her place to do so.

2.51 p.m.

Sir Edward Boyle: I am sure that the whole House is grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Mr. Goodhart) for raising this important subject and for doing so by no means for the first time.
The hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) properly pointed out that before now I have been on the Government Bench replying to a debate on this subject. Since those days I have a double interest to declare, because I am a part-time educational publisher in connection with Penguin books and also an officer of the National Book League.
My hon. Friend has done the House a service and I will endorse what he said about the importance of school books under a number of separate heads. As

he rightly said, this subject has a relevance to the recommendations of the Plowden Report. If we believe that the right approach to primary education is to entice children into learning, and if we are to lay a high value on the virtues of discovery as a part of learning, then textbooks clearly play a very important part in the primary school. When judging a primary school or a primary class, two safe criteria are the standard of art work in the class and the arrangement and quality of the books provided.
When we come to the secondary school, the question of textbooks rightly takes many new forms. We have the generality of the school library books and the possibility of a wide range of choice. Still more important, as the hon. Member for West Lothian said, there is the problem of the books needed for sixth-form education, and in that respect I wholeheartedly agree with what he said. Knowledge is already doubling every 10 years, and by the 1970's it may be doubling at an even faster rate. New editions of expensive textbooks are being brought out all the time. This must be a great problem for any school capitation allowance. The cost and number of textbooks which are essential these days to the school library are serious problems.
I am interested in the hon. Member's suggestion that a certain measure of bulk ordering might be possible. I will certainly take note of that suggestion in connection with my interests as a publisher.
One of the points which has struck me most in the last year or so has been the problem for publishers of small orders all the time—of driblets of orders. By the same token, the possibility of a bulk order affecting a large number of schools and authorities is certainly a matter to which the publishers, as well as the Government, ought to pay attention.
I feel very strongly, and my hon. Friend I know will agree, that whereas there may be some activities of Government—we mention them some times in our debates—which ought to wither away as wealth increases in the country, on the other hand, when there is some essential activity to be performed by a public authority, it ought to be performed as well as possible. I am flatly opposed to the idea that in the public sector of education any


service which is performed should be performed meanly. That is totally wrong. Where some service can properly wither away, let it wither away. But if a service is to be performed, let it be performed as well as possible. I agree with my hon. Friend in drawing a comparison between a number of authorities and the best of our independent schools. I am not one of those who wish to see any essential part of the service performed less well and less generously in the public sector than in the private sector.
Having said something about the objectives, let me say a word about means. This is a serious problem. The rate support grant and the basis of calculation for it have made the whole subject more difficult. The essential point of Sir Ronald Gould's letter, to which my hon. Friend rightly drew attention, is that if we cut down the relevant expenditure of local authorities, they are bound to cut what can be cut. No authority can cut down on teachers' salaries. Authorities are bound to cut down where they can, and unfortunately school books are apt to suffer. I also agree with those who ask why there is such a very great variation between authorities. That is a point which ought to be investigated by the Ministry, although we should not underrate what is done by Her Majesty's Inspectors. Over the country as a whole, the inspectors do very fine work in trying to bring the standards of authorities up to the level of the best, and it would be unfair to appear to be critical of the inspectorate. Nevertheless, there are undoubtedly greater variations than seem to be justified.
I am glad that the hon. Member for West Lothian talked about the importance of encouraging book ownership. I am equally glad that he mentioned in the context of the debate the developing countries. Having visited a number of these countries, I know that the demand for the best of our books is a demand which we should never forget. Publishers have a notable responsibility to be responsive to new demands and new types of situation.
This is a subject on which public opinion ought to be roused, and if this three-quarters-of-an-hour debate today, drawing attention to the subject, will increase local pressure on local authorities

to improve their standards, I am glad. I therefore end as I began by offering thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham for having performed such a useful purpose in raising this topic.

2.57 p.m.

The Minister of State, Department of Education and Science (Mrs. Shirley Williams): May I begin by echoing the thanks to the hon. Member for Beckenham (Mr. Goodhart) which have been expressed on both sides of the House for raising this question. In view of the fact that only last week I said that I thought that the attendance in the House for the Plowden debate could have been better, perhaps it is fair to say this afternoon that the attendance is quite remarkable for Easter Thursday at this time of the day. I thank my hon. Friends and hon. Members opposite for being present and contributing to the debate.
When I saw the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Handsworth (Sir E. Boyle) coming to listen to the debate, I was struck by the thought Plus ca change, plus c'est la même chose. I hope that I may be excused that short incursion into a foreign language. In any case, I said it very quickly. In 1959, when the hon. Member for Beckenham raised the same question, the right hon. Member for Handsworth, replying, said,
It is not easy for my right hon. Friend to get a really clear and reliable idea of the scale on which books are provided."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 27th July, 1959; Vol. 610, c. 278.]
I had a feeling that I might be repeating the same words this afternoon, but I thought that that might be to underline the point a little too strongly and I therefore will not repeat that word for word. It is fair to say that we still do not know in detail the precise statistics for expenditure on books, as distinct from other sorts of equipment, and I hope that we shall give careful consideration to obtaining rather clearer statistics from local education authorities on this matter.
I should like to thank the hon. Member for Beckenham, next, for his fairness in pointing to the very considerable increase in expenditure in the past 10 years. I share his view that it is still not sufficient, but I will come to that in a moment.
May I look first at the remarks made with his usual wide-ranging imagination


by my hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell). In the course of a very brief speech he managed to move around a good deal of the world. I will comment on one or two of the points which he made. The right hon. Member for Handsworth referred to the export of books. Although this is not strictly a matter for my Department, I should like to underline the importance of this matter and of the work which is being done very interestingly in a number of universities and institutes of education in such matters as the teaching of English as a second language and development studies of a kind which relate text books very closely to the experience of those countries. I should like to follow up the points which my hon. Friend made about bulk buying by pointing out that this is already done where consortia of local authorities get together, but I have no doubt that it could be taken further with very great benefit to the costing of books supplied.
The hon. Gentleman and the right hon. Gentleman made a point about sixth form libraries. At present, under the school building regulations, no secondary school can be built without a library. When a secondary school is remodelled or extended, invariably it has to have library accommodation built into it if it does not already have it. This in part goes back to the fact that we have a legacy of very old schools which do not have adequate library accommodation and a few of which do not have any library accommodation at all. The school building regulations make it impossible for a school on which building work is being done to continue at secondary level without library accommodation being provided.
What is encouraging is the situation in primary schools. A generation or so ago, as the Plowden Report points out in paragraph 591, there was no library accommodation at all in primary schools. Since the war we have seen increasingly the provision of library and book spaces in primary schools. Provision is growing all the time, although there is not as yet any obligation on primary schools to provide library accommodation. One of the encouraging things is that many primary schools are going in for book displays and classroom libraries which give very young children the experience and understanding of what it is to borrow

and read books and to gain some respect for them.
I wish to say a word or two about the encouragement which my Department is able to give to local education authorities in the supply of books. I should begin by repeating what my hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian said, namely, that this is fundamentally the responsibility of the local education authorities. Nevertheless, we give a good deal of encouragement. When one of Her Majesty's Inspectors visits a school, books and book supplies are one of the things which he or she is asked to consider specifically and a report dealing with the school invariably has a section on the provision of books.
Furthermore, the Association of Education Committees has underlined its encouragement to local education authorities to follow the practices of the better authorities. I should like to repeat a phrase used in the same Report from which he quoted in which the Association said:
It seems to us vitally important to recognise that the very large expenditure incurred in the provision of buildings and major equip-men, and in the salaries of teachers, may well not secure its full return unless there is an adequate expenditure on books and stationery, which are the essential instruments of education.
I would wish to underline that.
I should like to say in passing that a Report on Education issued in February, 1967 dealt at some length with public libraries and the inter-relationship between school and public libraries. We are, therefore, very much aware of this matter. We also also giving guidance on the ways in which school libraries are built up and ways in which books should be supplied.
I deal now with the question of finance. Unfortunately, as the hon. Member for Beckenham said, the figures are rather out of date. In 1964–65, £9,203,962 was spent on the provision of books. But, in addition, there was some loan expenditure for initial allowances to libraries which can be paid for either by loan account or by expenditure out of revenue, as the local education authority chooses.
The right hon. Member for Hands-worth referred specifically to the rate support grant and suggested, as one of his hon. Friends suggested at Question


Time not long ago, that it might limit expenditure on books. I do not accept this, and I should like for a few moments to go into a little detail.
In 1965–66 the expenditure by all local education authorities on primary and secondary schools, apart from teachers' salaries, amounted to £186 million. The estimates for 1967–68 for this same type of expenditure, exclusive of salaries, have been put at £203 million and for 1968–69 at £214 million. This allows for an increase over those two years—that is, actual expenditure in 1965–66 and estimated expenditure in 1967–68—of just over 9 per cent., or approximately slightly under 5 per cent. overall in each year; or, to put it in another way, allowing for the increase in the number of pupils, 2½ per cent. per pupil per year. This compares not only favourably but well with expenditure of the same kind if we go back some years to the situation which obtained in the late 1950s.

Sir E. Boyle: If I remember rightly, the National Plan indicated that recent figures showed that each year we spent 2½ per cent. more in real terms per primary pupil and 5 per cent. per secondary pupil. Therefore, 2½ per cent. more overall suggests some slowing-down in real terms on extra expenditure per pupil per year compared with the period immediately before the years which the hon. Lady has quoted.

Mrs. Williams: I thought that the right hon. Gentleman implied that the rate support grant was reducing the expenditure in this respect. I would strongly disagree with that and simply draw his attention to the fact that the credit squeeze has had some effect on this type of local education authority expenditure, but that we should be rapidly climbing Out of this situation next year and the year after.
On the question of variations between authorities, I hope that the hon. Member for Beckenham will not mind too much if I have a little game, too, since he referred to one or two local education authorities with particularly poor records. I would not wish to labour any point which might come close to you, Mr. Speaker, but perhaps I will be permitted to come a little closer to the hon. Gentleman, not so much by referring to his own constituency, but by pointing out the very

sharp difference between expenditure in the Outer London Boroughs and expenditure in the Inner London Education Authority.
In the Inner London Education Authority, expenditure on secondary school books is over 50 per cent. more than it is in the Outer London Boroughs. Expenditure in respect of primary children in the Inner London Education Authority is over 25 per cent. more than it is in the Outer London Boroughs. My hon. Friends will draw certain conclusions from that.

Mr. Goodhart: Would not the hon. Lady agree that in respect of primary school children the Inner London Education Authority does not come up to a reasonable standard?

Mrs. Williams: The Inner London Education Authority is very far ahead of the Outer London Boroughs. It is, therefore, only fair to say that there has been some deterioration in expenditure—

Mr. Goodhart: Because of Ealing and Redbridge alone.

Mrs. Williams: One can look around and say that the situation in the hon. Gentleman's constituency is not what it might be.
I come now to the Plowden Report. The question of extra books in educational priority areas will have to be discussed between my right hon. Friend and the local education authorities. They have been asked to comment on this matter and on other points. The same goes for inequalities in allowances. A lot has been done already about giving extra help to schools with special difficulties. Most local education authorities of which we have knowledge are generous in their treatment of authorities which have either language problems or problems concerned with the arrival of immigrant children who may not be used to books being readily supplied in the countries from which they came or schools in areas where there is heavy wear and tear on books. Although one would obviously wish to see this go further, there has been additional help given to schools with special difficulties.
On the point about freedom in spending, it is fair to say that the best local education authorities give the maximum


freedom to heads for the expenditure within their allowances, but we would wish to see it extended to all heads and the best possible advice made available to them by public libraries and others.
I now say a few words about the approach to textbooks and alterations in textbooks. The right hon. Member for Handsworth referred to some of the recent developments in textbooks. These are obviously exciting in respect of the work being done in modern mathematics textbooks, the work being increasingly done in language textbooks, and the work being done particularly for immigrant children in teaching English as a second language and by means of symbols and other things immediately familiar to them. The way in which textbooks are catching the interest of children means that children can be given the habit of reading and learning from books in the schools. It is worth underlining the point forcibly made in the Plowden Report that it is not purely a question of school libraries or public libraries, important as these are.
The Plowden Report indicated clearly that the kind of cultural deprivation which goes on when a family has few, if any, books in the home is also an important aspect of a child's capacity to gain from the education offered to it. I conclude, therefore, by saying that beyond school and public libraries, expenditure on books by parents who wish the best for their children is an extremely useful contribution to the educational process.

COUNCIL HOUSES (RENTS)

3.10 p.m.

Mr. William Price: I am grateful for the opportunity to raise a matter of interest to hundreds of thousands of council house tenants, many of whom face substantial increases in their rents. This Adjournment debate might be regarded in some ways as a public relations exercise on behalf of council house tenants, and I make no apology for that. My real objective is to abolish one or two of the myths which have grown up concerning council tenants, particularly the widespread belief that the majority are greatly subsidised by the rest of the ratepayers.
I would like to quote the situation in my constituency of Rugby, with an anti-Labour majority on the borough council. That authority is introducing a new scheme which, for many tenants, will mean a 40 per cent. increase in rents, bringing weekly payments for three-bedroom houses in many cases up to £4.
In a period of frozen wages, I thought it not unreasonable to refer the matter to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government. I got little satisfaction. I tried my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, and I got even less satisfaction. The Government take the view that this is a matter on which local authorities should make up their own minds, and in normal curcumstances there might be substance in that argument. Circumstances, however, are not normal. The wages of council house tenants have been frozen, and frozen very effectively. There have been many price increases, some of them justified, but this is a swingeing increase which is causing grave concern to the people involved.
In their prices and incomes policy White Paper, the Government say that
It is not possible to apply directly the criteria for increases in prices or incomes to rents.
I am bound to ask: why not? My hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary will argue that rents are not a price increase. I suggest that that is far too fine a distinction for the vast majority of my council house tenants, and, indeed, for myself.
The White Paper goes on to say:
But the principle of moderation should apply here also".
Does the Minister regard a 43 per cent. increase as moderate? If the answer is "No", what does he propose to do about it?
Finally, the White Paper states that
It is of great importance that, where rent increases do prove unavoidable, local authorities should make the fullest use of rent rebates to protect tenants of modest means.
To be fair to my council, it has introduced a rent rebate scheme and, I understand, has set aside the entire Exchequer grant of £60,000 to meet the rebates. The council has, however—this is where the argument arises—set limits so low that practically no tenants will qualify for


any rebates and the council will be left with a substantial profit on the housing revenue account at the end of the year.
The position in Rugby is that the only contribution from general rates to the housing account has been 4d. in the £ to help to subsidise old people—few of my constituents would object to that—and slum clearance. What action does the Ministry take when it comes across a rebate scheme which is, perhaps, not just? Secondly, what control does it have, or should it have, over the way in which its £60,000 grant is spent?
In future, in Rugby minimum and maximum rents will be set and a family's payments will be calculated on the gross income of the man and his wife. The council proposes to use one-sixth of this income as the basis for the new rent structure. In my view, that is a very high figure. The objection arises, however, because it discriminates against the lower-paid workers.
What will happen is that many council tenants will be paying one-sixth of their income whereas others, because they are rather better paid, will reach the maximum rent by contributing as little as one-eighth or, perhaps, one-tenth of their gross incomes. I am sure that that is not what the Minister has in mind when he talks of the need for rent rebate schemes. I concede that in Rugby there was a need for an increase—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member must link his remarks to some responsibility of the Minister. For the moment, he seems to be talking about something which is the responsibility of Rugby corporation.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. Robert Mellish): If I may intervene, Mr. Speaker, I would suggest that my hon. Friend is in order as he is properly asking, particularly with regard to rate rebate schemes, which are now a feature of local government finance, what action the Government of the day are taking. This is a relevant matter, because I propose, in answering it, to tell my hon. Friend exactly what we propose to do.

Mr. Price: I have this week been in the most unusual situation of having Front Bench speakers on both sides of

the House come to my assistance, perhaps against the Chair but with the kindest of intentions, and I am extremely grateful to right hon. and hon. Members on both sides.
I concede that there is a need for an increase. The Labour group argued that a 15 per cent. increase with Bank Rate at 7 per cent. would have met the deficit. With a 6 per cent. Bank Rate, it would in all probability have shown a profit. Instead, we have a new rent structure which flies in the face of Government policy, which has aroused bitter resentment among council tenants and which will result in real hardship for many people.
I have with me a petition signed by nearly 2,000 people. I am dubious about asking the rhetorical question but I will put it to my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary: what does he suggest that I should do with it? I have no idea where these petitions should or could usefully go.
The point of this Adjournment debate is the need for a national inquiry into council house rents. I would like that inquiry to establish the precise relationship between council tenants and private house owners. I would like it to consider and report upon the relationship between council house tenants and the rest of local government finance. What I really want to see is the misunderstanding and, in some cases, the outright prejudice towards council house tenants cleared up once and for all. This will only be done by considering the facts on a national basis.
I have referred to the fact that in Rugby there is no general subsidy. I have to agree that we get a substantial Exchequer grant, but it is no more than private house owners get in the form of Income Tax relief. Too many people are seeking to drive a wedge between council house tenants and private house owners. I am not one of those. I want the Government to give every possible assistance so that people can buy their own houses.
I would like the inquiry to consider the broad question of council house rents, the responsibilities of the community as a whole—not merely of council house tenants, but of the community—towards old people's homes, slum clearance and provision in relation to unproductive land


costs, which all to often tend to fall on council tenants. When the inquiry has reported—I assume that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary will concede one—I would like the Ministry to lay down the principles on which council rents and rebates should be based to ensure fair and equitable schemes throughout the country.
I want to be objective and I am happy to say that I know of Conservative councils which operate a sensible rent structure with reasonable rebates. I know of Conservative councils that are not doing so. I have no doubt, on the other hand, that there are Labour councillors and councils who are in need of advice and guidance from the Ministry. I hope that in that sense this is very much a non-political issue. Why is it not possible to have a measure of consistency over the whole country? It can be done only in one way, and that is by the Ministry taking a more direct interest in what it now regards as basically a matter for the local authorities.
For years we have had the picture painted in some quarters of the council tenant with £40 and £50 a week coming in and a Jaguar in the drive and with a rent of a few shillings a week. I leave aside the question of their salaries and of their cars, but let me say this: no one will convince me that £4 a week, with no Income Tax relief, for a 20-year old council house, is anything less than a very substantial rent. Yet, despite that, the image of the second-class citizen living off the rest of the community remains.
The type of inquiry I am seeking may, of course, prove me to be quite wrong. I am prepared to take that chance. If, as I suspect, the Parliamentary Secretary sees no need for the inquiry, I would urge him to take a close look at rent schemes being introduced not only in Rugby, but all over the country and whether in Labour-controlled or Conservative-controlled or Liberal-controlled areas. The Ministry has a direct responsibility in this matter, and so, in view of the restrictions on incomes, has the Department of Economic Affairs.
As I said at the beginning, hundreds of thousands of people are involved. This is not a question which should be left to the whims and fancies of individual councils, whatever their make-up. The

Minister has taken a stand on the sale of council houses. I suggest the time has come for him to take the initiative on council house rents.

3.22 p.m.

Mr. Hugh Rossi: First of all, I should like to compliment the hon. Member for Rugby (Mr. William Price) on the objective way in which he has put forward his proposal, which receives a great deal of sympathy from this side of the House. I cannot say I can comment in detail on the position at Rugby but there are some general observations I should like to make about the need for a public inquiry into the whole structure of local authority rents and the very formidable case the hon. Member has put forward for this.
There are, no doubt, very great anomalies throughout the country, and great disparity between the rents being charged by one local authority and another. If one takes as an example a post-war three-bedroomed house one finds that within the Greater London area alone the variations in the maximum rents chargeable are between 44s. 5d. a week and 92s. 4d. per week. Those are maximum rents charged as between one London authority and another for a postwar three-bedroomed house. In county boroughs one will find a range from 24s 6d. a week to 88s. 8d. a week, and in non-county boroughs the range is between 20s. 11d. and 76s. 5d. a week.
I think it is a fair comment to say that this is a situation which requires the closest examination and investigation, because one of the side effects of this must be to put a brake on the mobility of labour when there is need for it. A man who is living in one London borough and paying a maximum rent of 44s. 5d. a week for a three-bedroomed house is not going to move readily to another borough which will charge him 92s. 4d. a week for identical accommodation, or to another part of the country outside of London where he may have to pay 88s. 8d. a week. This is a matter of general public policy and something which the Government must look into most carefully.
The second anomaly to which the hon. Member drew attention is the hardship which is being suffered by many lower-income council tenants. In fact the housing statistics for 1964–65 brought this


out quite clearly when it showed that half the local authority tenants with incomes of up to £10 a week pay more than one-fifth of their income by way of rent to their authorities and at the same time 95 per cent. of local authority tenants with incomes of £20 a week or more pay less than one-tenth of their incomes by way of rent. Here again one feels that there is injustice and unfairness.
This, of course, must be examined against the background of public expenditure. The Exchequer subsidies for 1966–67, the current year, are running at a figure of about £83 million. In 1969–70, in three years' time, those subsidies will be about £130½, million. I do not think that there is anyone in this country who would gainsay that taxation and rating has now reached the level of being oppressive and penal. No wonder we have a brain drain, with people escaping from this country to get jobs where they feel they will be able to retain a true proportion of the reward of their efforts. No wonder one hears a workman saying, "I am not going to work overtime. Why should I work overtime when the greater part of it is going to be taken away from me in tax?" Taxation has reached a level where it is a disincentive to greater productivity.
Therefore, the question immediately must arise, at what level is public expenditure at this rate justified? Are we satisfied that we are getting value for money? Are we satisfied that the money is being used to the best possible purpose? Are we sure the money is being used for the people who really need it, or are we just lavishing it indiscriminately on people who have no need of public assistance of any kind? Are we giving subsidies where they are not required? It this is the case, then it has to be checked, it has to be stopped, because it is fruitless, is impeding initiative, cutting down the desire to produce more, to work harder, if we take so much in taxation and use that money pointlessly and wastefully.
I do not think there is any fair-minded person in this country who would not agree that the poorer people in our society who cannot afford the full rent for their accommodation should receive some help from the general body of taxpayers and ratepayers. I think every fair-minded

person would be prepared to see some part of his income devoted to that purpose. It is another thing to say, "I am going to pay tax in order to help people who are the same as I am—or who are better off than I am".
It is at this point that not merely a ludicrous situation but a social injustice arises, and it requires the greatest scrutiny. It is at this point that one has to examine the need for thoroughgoing differential rent schemes devised so that such subsidy as is taken from the taxpayer or ratepayer is applied to help the person with the lowest income and the person in need of that help, and is not given to the person who is able to stand on his own feet and pay his own way. Only by doing that will any saving in public expenditure be attained.
In that connection, I want to draw attention to the report of a meeting of the London Boroughs Association which took place last October and at which an admirable address was delivered by Mr. Stephenson, the Treasurer of the City of Birmingham. He made these comments on the situation:
It is clear that as any reserve in the rents of pre-war houses becomes exhausted we are being brought each year nearer to the realisation that we are left with a straight fight between a full rent (less the Government subsidy) or an increasing contribution from the ratepayer often himself paying an excessively inflated price for his accommodation. As far as the elected representative is concerned it is a more precise dilemma—whether it is better to take the odium of increasing the rent or increasing the rates. There is no doubt that we must ultimately reach the position"—
and I ask the hon. Member for Rugby to bear this in mind—
that the municipal tenant must pay sums more nearly approaching the full value of his accommodation; if he is on average earnings he may not even have the full benefit of the Government subsidy which may by the operation of rent-rebate schemes be pulled towards the poorer tenant. At the present time the fortunes of the housing tenant are often regarded as bound up with the finances of the housing revenue account and fierce argument develops as to whether this charge or that charge is fair to the housing revenue account, for example, loan charges on houses under construction and land bought in advance; some arguments are used in the extreme case not in an endeavour to assess an equitable rent for the municipal tenant, but to prevent any scrutiny of his rent at all. The Labour Mayor of Rochdale recently disposed of many such arguments, putting it far more concisely than I could achieve when he declared, 'You can


fiddle your books in any way you like but the net result is that you will increase rent or rates. There is no other way before you'.
That is really the dilemma. To what extent does one place an additional burden on the ratepayer and the taxpayer, and to what extent does one require the tenant occupying council accommodation to pay his own way? That can be achieved only by a differential rent scheme whereby the rent which he pays is geared to his income.

Mr. William Price: When the hon. Gentleman refers to the income of the tenant, would he also agree, as happens in my constituency, that the gross income of the wife should also be taken into account?

Mr. Rossi: There are many schemes, and it is done in many different ways. The local authority with which I was concerned took into account a proportion of the wife's earnings, but not the whole amount. That is something which requires the inquiry for which the hon. Gentleman has asked, to find an equitable way in which to arrive at a computation so as to achieve a rent which a tenant or a tenant's family is able to afford.
There is a great deal of variety in rent rebate schemes or differential rent schemes up and down the country. Some of them are no more than a sham, as the Minister mentioned in the course of the debate on the Housing Subsidies Bill the other day.
What one has to do is to carry out the inquiry which is asked for and arrive at a system which will bring about a fair and equitable result for all concerned—the ratepayer, the taxpayer and the council tenant and his family. That is implicit in the White Paper on the Housing Programme, 1965–70, which has been quoted frequently in this Chamber and in Committee upstairs. Paragraph 41 of that White Paper says:
Help for those who most need it can be given only if the subsidies are in large part used to provide rebates for tenants whose means are small. A number of authorities have had the courage to adopt thoroughgoing rent rebate schemes and have found that it does not entail raising general rent levels beyond the means of the majority of their tenants. The more generous subsidies now to be provided create an opportunity for all authorities to review their rent policies along these lines.

The one criticism that one has is that, despite these fine words, the inference of this White Paper is that these new subsidies being given under the Housing Subsidies Bill should really go only to those authorities adopting these fair means of distributing these subsidies.
Although the Government have asked local authorities to enter into consultations with them, the Government have, in fact, drawn back from the point of saying, "We will not give you these subsidies unless you satisfy us that you have produced a fair scheme having regard to the needs and circumstances of your locality".
That is our criticism from this side of the House, and we have repeated it time and time again. The Minister, in answering this criticism, has said, "Well, the Government are reluctant to compel local authorities to do things which are really within the discretion and the ambit of the local authorities' own sphere of activity". But—and here is the inconsistency—in matters of a comprehensive system of education, there has been compulsion by the Government, and only yesterday, or the day before, the Government issued a circular in which they indicated pretty clearly that there will be compulsion over the sale of council houses. But when it comes to the question of implementing their declared policy, which social justice so clearly demands, the Government draw back.
The view held on this side of the House is that the Government draw back because there are so many hon. Members opposite who are opposed fundamentally to the concept of a differential rent scheme. It is mostly amongst Labour-controlled authorities that this resistance is felt, and the Minister is reluctant to offend his friends in the country. That is why he has not had the courage to come forward and insist, far more strongly than he has hitherto, that schemes of this kind should be adopted.
That is the opinion and impression that he has created. I hope that later on in the debate he will show that we are wrong in this, and that in future he proposes to take a far more firm line than he has been willing to take hitherto. He cannot come to us with this argument that he is reluctant to use compulsion, or think that it is wrong to say, "I will not pay the subsidy unless you bring


forward these schemes", because compulsion is used by the Government in other spheres of local authority work, education in particular, and now more recently over council houses. So the Minister of Housing is quite prepared to use compulsion where he feels that his friends are possibly solidly behind him, and it is only because he feels that they are not behind him in this matter of bringing forward differential schemes that he has been so slow. He will probably tell us that these consultations are going on, and that he hopes to bring forward some kind of fair model rent rebate scheme which, with adaptations, may be used by authorities up and down the country.
We should like to see this scheme, and we should like to study it. We should like also to see a greater definiteness in the action of the Minister. It is for this reason that one welcomes an inquiry and an investigation into the anomalies of the kind that have been mentioned.

3.40 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. Robert Mellish): My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mr. William Price) has not been a Member of this House for very long, but already he has established a reputation for speaking often, and speaking frankly. I think that he is a good constituency Member. I shall do my best to reply to him at length, because he has raised a subject which is causing much concern in many local authority areas.
Before I do so, however, I would like to say a few words to the hon. Member for Hornsey (Mr. Rossi). I find it odd that the hon. Gentleman, who is a member of the Conservative Party which was in power for 13 years, should tell us what to do, and how to do it, when throughout that time all this talk about courage in dealing with council rents was noticeably lacking. Now we are suddenly told about this need for courage, and even that the Government lack guts in dealing with rent rebate schemes. Throughout the period when the party opposite was in power all that hon. Gentlemen did was to bleat about the situation. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not convey to the House or to the country that this position has suddenly arisen, because deficits in

housing revenue accounts have been with us for a long time.

Mr. Rossi: rose—

Mr. Mellish: I have only just started.
The fact is that these deficits have been with us for a long time, and it happens to be the fact that the more progressive a local authority is on the housing side, the greater its deficit, and yet it is argued that many Labour-controlled councils have greater deficits than others. This is due, not to mismanagement, but because they have been more progressive.

Mr. Rossi: Would not the hon. Gentleman agree that the Conservative Minister of Housing and Local Government said time and time again in answer to authorities which asked for increased housing subsidies that he would consider giving them only when he was satisfied that most authorities in this country had adopted fair differential rent schemes?

Mr. Mellish: Yes, but we must judge people on what they do, and not on what they say. This is what will happen at the next General Election. When that comes, the Government and the Opposition will be judged not on what they have said but what they have done.
We accept the argument that some action has to be taken because this is a problem which is causing so much concern in many local authority areas. Let us be clear about the responsibility for fixing rents. I want, first, to refer to the legal position. Under the Housing Act, 1957, local authorities have independent responsibility—and it must be remembered that that Act was passed by the party opposite—for
the general management, regulation and control"—
of the houses they own, and for making—
such reasonable charges for the tenancy or occupation of the houses as they may determine.
It follows, therefore, that local authorities are solely responsible for the fixing of rents and the timing of increases, and my hon. Friend knows that because of the importance of price restraint the Government have asked local authorities—and this is all we can do, ask them—to avoid, or to limit, rent increases as far as they can during the time


of economic difficulty. But the Government have no power to direct councils not to increase their rents, and they recognise that some authorities may find increases unavoidable. We have appealed to councils, where there have to be increases, to protect poorer tenants from the impact of the higher rents by granting rent rebates, and I shall say something more about this in a few moments.
It is sometimes forgotten that local authorities do not provide housing on a commercial basis, and that they are directly accountable for their actions to the local electors. They are also obliged by law to balance their housing revenue accounts annually so that the true cost of the housing service can be seen and met each year. Any deficit has to be made up from the general rate fund. The ultimate decision, therefore, whether to increase rents, and the responsibility for this decision, must lie with individual councils, for they alone are responsible to their tenants and ratepayers for the rents and rates they charge.
This is a basic and long-established principle of the independence of local government. The Government happen to believe that local democracy is an essential part of the life of the community which should not be interfered with from Whitehall.

Mr. James Allason: Except for education.

Mr. Mellish: With respect, that, too, was dealt with, because the money which the Government pay for education is separate from that for housing, as the hon. Gentleman knows only too well. This point was dealt with when we discussed the Housing Subsidies Bill.
The Government's housing record is sufficient proof not only that we have a realistic and sympathetic understanding of the housing needs of both tenants and owner occupiers, but that we are doing something effective to help them. For instance, one of the major objectives of the Government's housing policy is to enable local authorities to build new houses at a reasonable cost. This is why we brought in the Housing Subsidies Bill which introduces a new system of housing subsidies which are far more generous than those given by any previous Government.
I might say that in going round asking, almost begging, local authorities to increase their housing programmes—and this includes the constituency of the hon. Member for Hornsey—I have found that they, in turn, have begged me to ensure that this Government will introduce more generous subsidies than have ever been given before. We have done that. These subsidies will also help local authorities to adjust the rent to poorer tenants.
The new basic subsidy, to be paid on all council houses approved after 25th November, 1965, will bridge the gap between the average loan charges incurred on the cost of providing housing and the charges which would have been incurred had the interest rate been 4 per cent. To give my hon. Friend an example—and I hope that his friends in Rugby will read at least this part of my speech—assuming a current borrowing rate of 6½ per cent., the proposed new basic subsidy on a house or flat costing £5,000 would be £112 a year for 60 years. This compares very favourably with the previous basic subsidy of only £8 or £24 a year under the Housing Act 1961.
The Government have done something else to help council tenants. I should mention briefly the Government's rate rebate scheme, since what we are very much concerned with in this debate is the effect of rent increases on council tenants with low incomes.
In the weekly payment a council tenant makes for his house there is, of course, an element for rates. Under our rate rebate scheme, householders— tenants or owner-occupiers alike—may be relieved of up to two-thirds of their rate bill, apart from the first £7 10s. a year which all must pay. A single person qualifiies for a maximum rebate if his income is £8 a week or less, and a married couple with no children qualify if their weekly income is £10 or under. The income limit is raised by £1 10s. a week for each child in the family.
Thus, in considering the effect of rent increases on council tenants, we should take into account the fact that rate rebates can give really effective relief to poorer tenants. Indeed, about 1 million people obtained rate rebates in 1966–67. The average rebate they received was £15, which is half the average applicant's rate bill for the year. But there may be some people who are entitled to rate


rebates who have not applied for them. We have recently given further publicity to the scheme, and issued 13 million explanatory leaflets to all holders of family allowances and pension books. I beg my hon. Friend and all other hon. Members and local authorities to do all they can to ensure that council tenants are aware of the scheme, because they are ratepayers, as I say, as well as being council tenants.

Mr. William Price: All of us on this side appreciate what the rate rebate scheme did, but it is only fair to point out that those million people would be very largely the elderly and the long-term sick. My concern in my constituency is with those taking home between, say, £12 and £14 a week. In spite of having a West Midland constituency, with the motor industry, I have a very large number of these people who are not qualified under the scheme.

Mr. Mellish: I have not forgotten that aspect, and I will come to it.
My job is to say what the Government have done with regard to rents and rates generally, because every council tenant is also a ratepayer. I am arguing that certain council tenants are not getting the rate rebates they ought to have. I hope that my hon. Friend is satisfied that everyone in Rugby entitled to the rebate is getting it—if so, he must be the luckiest Member in the House.
Another measure we have introduced to help poorer families is contained in Section 6 of the Local Government Act, 1966. Under that Section, from 1st April, 1967, all rating authorities will be required to charge a lower rate in the £ on dwellings than on rateable hereditaments generally in their areas. In 1967–68, the differential will be 5d. and in 1968–69 it will be 10d. We expect the differential to go up by a further 5d. in succeeding years. The loss of rate income caused by these reductions will be made up by a new Exchequer grant of £23 million in 1967–68 and £47 million in 1968–69.
This differential may not stop domestic rates from rising altogether, but it will certainly mean that rises will be much smaller than they would have been otherwise. For example, in my hon. Friend's constituency, after taking account of the 5d. reduction, domestic ratepayers will,

in general, face no increase at all next year. Let us get that on the record and tell the people of Rugby.

Mr. William Price: I have told them.

Mr. Mellish: I hope that my hon. Friend has. It needs to be emphasised. In the country as a whole—the hon. Member for Hornsey will be glad to hear this—the existing evidence from nearly 600 authorities suggests that on average domestic rates will not rise by more than 1 per cent. for 1967–68.
I have been asked by my hon. Friend why council house rent increases should not be referred to the National Board for Prices and Incomes. My hon. Friend said that he himself had written to my right hon. Friend. It should be clear from what I have already said that this would not be appropriate, but it may be helpful to the House and to local authority tenants who may read about this debate if I spell out why the Government do not regard council rents as a suitable subject for the Board.
Local authority rents are very different from most other prices, for this reason. They are not fixed on a commercial basis and the councils which fix rents are directly accountable for their actions to the local electorate, whereas traders and manufacturers have far greater freedom to take pricing decisions.
No post-war housing legislation has included any provision for Ministerial supervision and control of local authority rent policies. If I am asked why this is, the answer is that there are 1,200 housing authorities in England and such a power would mean that civil servants in Whitehall would have to sit in judgment on the policies decided by locally elected representatives.
The present Government, like previous Governments, do not think that it would be right to introduce such a provision or to diminish the local authorities' statutory responsibility for deciding their own rent policy and balancing their housing revenue account from year to year, as they are obliged to do.
However, we have already advised local authorities. The Government have made it perfectly clear that we want councils to make a serious review of their rent policies and to make absolutely sure that they do, in fact, give the greatest help where it is most needed. Paragraph


41 of the White Paper has already been quoted.
There is nothing new about this for the Labour Party. The hon. Member for Hornsey made fun of the fact that we were terrified of some of our back benchers who did not want to introduce rent rebate schemes. In fact, the Labour Party has always taken this view about rent rebate schemes. The Tories seem to have got on the band wagon a little late. The late Arthur Greenwood, the father of my right hon. Friend the present Minister of Housing and Local Government, issued a circular way back in 1930 to all local authorities which contained this statement:
Rent relief should be given only to those who need it, only for so long as they need it.
I freely admit that the case for this is as strong today as it was in 1930. It can best be demonstrated by the fact that, according to the Ministry of Labour Family Expenditure Survey, about 30 per cent. of council tenants with household incomes of £500 a year or less were paying more than one-fifth of their income in rent, whereas almost 98 per cent. of those with household incomes of £1,050 a year were paying less than one-tenth of their income in rent. The results are very similar if we take head-of-household incomes instead of household incomes.
These disparities in what is a major social service are very disturbing indeed, especially because of the burden they place on the poorest families. Let it be very clear that housing subsidies are not paid to produce such inequitable results. The Government acknowledge a responsibility to give a lead to local authorities in this matter. This they have done and will continue to do.
The new rates of subsidy should serve to remind local authorities that they are administering a major social service which must be based on a clear assessment of individual needs and a strong sense of social justice.
At the end of last year my right hon. Friend set up a working party with the local authority associations and the G.L.C. to consider the principles upon which an adequate and comprehensive rent rebate scheme could be based while allowing for adjustment to local circum-

stances. I am glad to be able to say that the working party has finished its report and that my right hon. Friend is now discussing it with the local authority associations. We propose to send out to all local authorities model rent rebate schemes and we shall, in effect, ask them to follow the principles contained in these rent rebate schemes.
My hon. Friend the Member for Rugby mentioned his authority's rent rebate scheme. I ask his authority, through him, seriously to consider the guide lines we shall be issuing before it implements its own scheme. Frankly, from what he has said—and it is not for me to criticise any rent rebate scheme—the scheme in Rugby falls far short of what we believe to be a fair scheme. I say to the party opposite and to my hon. Friend that the Government have already decided to take the necessary action on rent rebate schemes generally, by issuing the circular which I have already mentioned.
My hon. Friend said that there seemed to be a feeling in the country that there was a prejudice against council tenants. This is perfectly true. There is this sort of attitude of mind that, somehow, council tenants are being heavily subsidised by the other ratepayers. It is very sad that this idea should get abroad. If local authorities were to apply their rent rebate schemes it would mean that those who could afford to pay would be paying the sort of rents which are realistic for them to pay, and that the only people getting the benefit of full subsidy would be those right at the bottom end of the scale. All sorts of people get subsidies. Farmers get subsidies and nobody ever queries that fact. Family allowance is a form of subsidy. It is the council tenant who seems to bear the whole brunt of this criticism, although most of them are being asked to pay rents which they can ill-afford to pay.
I recognise the strength of the question: why have rent increases been allowed at a time of wage freeze and severe restraint? Throughout the period of the freeze hardly any authorities increased rents. They responded to the Government's lead. Most of the authorities which have now put rents up have done so because their housing revenue accounts are in deficit. My Department is conducting a survey of the whole question of housing


revenue accounts. Some of us believe that there is a tendency—we may have to bring in legislation to deal with this—for many items to be put on the back of housing revenue accounts although they ought not to be there, so that council tenants are being asked to bear a load which they should not bear.
This is, indeed, a situation in which we may have to intervene. We have been asked to have courage and to make it mandatory. First of all, there will have to be variations for the different regions in the schemes which we shall introduce. We cannot lay down one particular scheme and say, "This is what it has got to be". In some parts of the country a rent rebate scheme would not be logical at all. It is all very well for people to talk about what we should do at Whitehall from the mandatory point of view, but we ought to be clear about what we all want to do. Hon. Members opposite mention rent rebate schemes, which they have mixed up with the word "differential". I do not know whether hon. Members opposite are clear what they are talking about.
When we send out these guidelines and principles, they will be the basic framework which we shall expect local authorities to follow. If some authorities refuse to follow them it may then be fair to ask us, say in a year's time, what we are going to do about Rugby. My hon. Friend may well have the right to ask that question then, but at the moment I can only say that I have shown that since the present Government have been in office, we have done what we can to keep rates steady by our domestic rate levy. We are doing what we can for council tenants by increasing subsidies by almost trebling the amount involved.
We are not unaware of the problems, and we shall continue to ensure that those in the greatest need get the greatest help.

WELSH TOURIST BOARD

4.0 p.m.

Mr. Ednyfed Hudson Davies: I am glad to have this opportunity to draw attention to several issues connected with the organisation of tourism in Wales and, in particular, certain aspects of the work and resources of the Welsh Tourist Board. It is an opportunity to develop in rather more detail arguments which I first put forward in the Welsh day debate in November last year.
One of our greatest national assets in Wales is our tourist potential. We have scenic beauty, open spaces, moorland, mountains, lakes and rivers, sandy beaches and rocky coves. Whether one is searching for rest or recreation, for a quiet holiday or the bustle of a lively seaside resort, all these can be found in Wales.
The extent to which our tourist potential has been developed is not inconsiderable. Tourism is at present the fifth most important industry in Wales, with a turnover estimated to be approaching £60 million per annum. Our share of the British domestic market is considerable. Last year, no fewer than 12 per cent. of British holidaymakers came to Wales, a startling figure when it is remembered that Scotland, with its much greater area and its long tradition of tourism, attracted rather fewer, only 11 per cent. of British holidaymakers.
This is a respectable record, and all credit must be given to the contribution made by the Welsh Tourist Board. But we have only scratched the surface. There is immense scope for further growth, and this is a critical moment for tourism in Wales. The field is highly competitive We are in competition not only with other parts of Britain, but with other countries abroad, and, if we are to make full use of the opportunities for growth which are open to us, the time has now come for a radical change in our approach to tourism in Wales.
There are two fundamental requirements. One is that we should adequately publicise what we have to offer in a thoroughly professional manner. I have recently come across in the House the belief that Wales is a land of coal mines and slag heaps. Misconception of this


kind is, I am afraid, all too widespread still. Both throughout the rest of Britain and abroad there is much that needs to be done to project the true image of Wales and what it has to offer.
Second—this is possibly even more important than publicity—our tourist facilities and what we have to offer must be developed and improved. Standards have to be improved and maintained. Sometimes they are deplorably low. New investment must be directed to the right kind of tourist service and facility. There must be constant research into the demands of the market, into the question of exactly who is the tourist who comes to Wales, and what he is looking for.
These two functions, publicity, on the one hand, and development, research and the sponsoring of tourist activities within Wales, on the other, cannot be successfully undertaken separately by separate bodies. What is required is one body adequately financed and responsible for the total development and promotion of tourism in Wales. We do not at present have in Wales a body which is equipped to meet all these requirements.
I am quite happy—I hope that the Minister of State agrees—that the presentation of Wales abroad should be left mainly in the hands of the British Travel Association. This organisation, closely controlled by the Board of Trade, which last year received a grant of £2 million from the Treasury, describes its own primary function as attracting overseas visitors to Britain, and I gather that Wales has been very well represented in its overseas publicity. Perhaps my right hon. Friend can throw further light on that and the precise extent of the coverage given to Wales.
There has, however, been another development recently about which I am far less happy. To stimulate the domestic tourist trade within Britain, it was intended that the British Travel Association should receive a grant of £1 million to be spread over three years. Because of the squeeze, that did not get fully under way, and last year the B.T.A. received, I think, only about one-tenth of the £330,000 it expected. I gather that this year there is a prospect that it may get the full amount, and that it will spend the money on publicising various parts of Britain. No doubt it will use organisa-

tions such as the Welsh Tourist Board as its agents.
I consider it to be highly unsatisfactory that the B.T.A. should be responsible for sponsoring in turn say, the South-West, Scotland, Wales and various other parts of Britain. That should be a local and regional function. The essence of successful advertising is that it is carried out by people who are committed. The B.T.A. would undoubtedly be impartial in its attempt to project each area in turn, but that kind of thing should not be done impartially.
The Welsh Tourist Board, either in its present form or in an improved and extended form, should have direct responsibility for the sponsoring and publicity of Wales as a tourist country. It cannot hope to do so adequately on its present finances. It is in no sense an official Government organisation, but is a voluntary organisation, deriving the bulk of its income from the contributions of its members. During the year ended March, 1966, it received nearly £14,500 from local authorities which were members, £3,500 from hotels and catering establishments, and £11,000 from the B.T.A. as a contribution towards overseas publicity services. Excluding a research grant received by the Board, its total income for that year was £44,000.
The tourist boards of Northern Ireland, Jersey and the Isle of Man, each with a smaller holiday industry than Wales, receive well over £100,000 each from their respective Governments, while the Welsh Tourist Board must rely almost entirely on the support of its members. Although it attracts a smaller share of the British domestic market, Scotland receives from the B.T.A. over £50,000 per annum, whereas Wales received only £12,000 last year. Even if the assessment were made on the basis of the number of overseas visitors coming to both countries, that would still not be a fair allocation. It is true that Scotland has about twice as many overseas visitors as Wales, but it receives from the B.T.A. a sum four times that given to Wales.
If ever proof were required of the inadequate finances of the Welsh Tourist Board, it is that it had an overdraft at the end of last year of £14,500. That overdraft was allowed by the bank simply because the Board's chairman, who is


dedicated to its interests and happens to be very wealthy, was willing to stand as personal guarantor for that sum in his private capacity. That is the kind of financial difficulty which the body sponsoring tourism in Wales has to face, and it is evidence that something needs to be done urgently.
This is a very critical time in the development of tourism. The days are over when the function of a tourist board consisted of the preparation of brochures. What is now needed is a tourist development corporation with the power and finances to publicise and develop tourism and co-ordinate the whole industry.
The success of Northern Ireland in tourism is very largely to be attributed to the fact that publicity and development, including control over grants and investments, has been vested in one authority. France is now in the process of reorganising her tourist industry in that way, through regional development schemes. But in Wales we have a medley of different authorities. The Board has in the past been primarily concerned with publicity. During the last two years it has opened out into the field of research, and has done this very successfully. It has been able to quantify the field to assess what kind of resources are now available and show how the trends of the market are changing and what is changing in the requirements of visitors. But investment allowances are controlled by the Board of Trade, with the creation of local employment rather than the development of tourism as such being the critical consideration.
The committee appointed to approve grants to those hotels which can claim that they can improve their standard of service for overseas visitors has no connection whatsoever with the work of the Tourist Board. In any case, the minimum loans of £20,000 are much too big to be of any great use in Wales, where the majority of tourist units are relatively small and do not come into this category.
The Sports Council has a finger in this pie. It is looking into some tourist aspects in Wales quite independently of the Tourist Board itself, carrying out a survey of recreational facilities in Wales.
Again, there is an overlap between the Tourist Board and the National Parks Commission—an overlap but apparently

no liaison, as is illustrated by the fact that both organisations were quite unknown to each other planning to build an information centre in the village of Betws-y-Coed, in my constituency.
This fragmentation of responsibility towards tourism is fantastic in an industry where there is so much potential for growth. I do not here in any way criticise the work of the present Board. Within the limits of its resources it has done an excellent job. But what is needed now is a much more powerful body closely linked with the Welsh Office, with overall responsibility for tourism in Wales, adequately financed for the purpose and representing all the interests involved in the tourist industry.
The links between the Welsh Tourist Board and the Welsh Office at present are very tenuous. Such Government money as comes to the Welsh Tourist Board, other than the research grant, comes via the British Tourist Association from the Board of Trade with no direct involvement by the Welsh Office. This is certainly a field in which the Welsh Office should be very closely involved, and I hope that the Minister will say something about this. Such a development corporation should be responsible, for example, for all national and regional publicity. I think that strictly local publicity is very often carried out best by the local authorities themselves, and certainly things like information services should be carried out at the local level but perhaps with supervision from the development corporation.
A region like North Wales is very much a unified region from the point of view of tourism. I am somewhat disturbed by the fact that, following the Cole Report, the Board's activities have been divided among so many different area associations. There may be a danger that in increasing the machinery we are not necessarily increasing effectiveness. I wonder whether the Minister has any views on that.
The Board, incidentally, could well have its headquarters in North Wales in that two out of every three visitors to Wales go to North Wales rather than South Wales. I am not at all certain that its headquarters should be in Cardiff.
The Board ought to have adequate research facilities. The present grant for


research was for a three-year period—£40,000. Two of the years have now passed. Before long that research project will come to an end. What happens then? Tourism is a constantly changing field, and the maintenance of standards of service and amenities cannot be separated from continued research into who the tourists are and what kind of service, accommodation and amenity they are looking for. The work carried out by Mr. Michael Reece, of the research unit, has shown clearly, for example, that the demand for self-catering accommodation is increasing. Without knowing this kind of thing, it is impossible to plan for the future.
But research must go on all the time and it must go on hand in hand with growth and development. Will the Minister tell us what the prospects are for research in the future? One cannot expect to retain the services of highly-skilled research workers when their future may be in some doubt. In view of the startling success of the present research project, I hope that we shall be given some assurance that in future research will become a permanent feature of the work of the Tourist Board in Wales and will be closely interlinked with the day-to-day work of the Board and will not be something of an appendage.
In Scotland, the Highlands and Islands Board has indicated the direction in which tourist organisations should go. There the Board is able to co-ordinate and advise, and it is also spending £1 million, I believe, on building five hotels of its own. In Northern Ireland the tourist board is strong enough to have been able to bring sufficient pressure over the question of S.E.T. to ensure that 50 per cent. repayment is made to the tourist trade. The grants in Northern Ireland are such that it is still a reasonable proposition to invest in the tourist industry there. This is not happening these days in Wales, and that is not because the market for tourism in Wales is any worse than that in Ireland. It may well be better.
A tourist board should be able to provide extensive advisory services to local authorities and to hotels. It should be responsible for running courses in off-season periods for hotel and catering staff. It should control tourist amenities.

It should supervise the maintenance of standards. It should be thinking about what kind of off-season industries could be introduced into tourist areas to ease the problem of winter unemployment. It should be able to advise the Government on where and how much investment is needed in the tourist trade.
Tourism is composed of relatively small units—hotels and local authorities. If each of these is to have a sense of direction and an understanding of how it should develop, this can be achieved only through the guidance and encouragement of a body which has made it its concern to understand the total field and to understand how each unit fits into the overall picture. Until we realise that tourism is very big business, calling for an adequately financed central organisation of the most professional kind, there is no prospect of our making anything like the use that we can make of the national resources with which we have been blessed.
I very much hope that the Minister will give some indication that the Welsh Office will be tackling this problem. What prospect have we of a tourist development corporation? I very much hope that something will be done about it, with a body which will work in very close liaison with the Welsh Office and which will have the financial resources which such a body must have if it is to carry out its task effectively.

4.19 p.m.

Mr. David Gibson-Watt: May I make a short intervention in this debate, which has been rightly initiated by the hon. Member for Conway (Mr. Ednyfed Hudson Davies). I hope that he will allow me to congratulate him on a thoughtful and most interesting speech on a subject of which he has clearly made a close study.
This is also a subject which we discussed in the Welsh Grand Committee a week last Wednesday. I am well aware that on that occasion it was not possible for the hon. Lady the Minister of State, Welsh Office, who is to answer the debate, to give us a very full answer to some of the questions which we then put to her about the tourist industry. To be fair, the main subject on that occasion was the new town in Mid-Wales, but when we deal with rural development, as the


hon. Member rightly said, the question of tourism arises straight away. The hon. Gentleman put it very well when he said that tourism was a multiplicity of small businesses, but at the same time was big business. It, is big business, and it needs investment.
I do not intend to discuss where that investment should come from, whether it should come mainly from the Government, or mainly from free enterprise. Perhaps I should confess an interest in this subject. I know from personal experience how much income and how much employment tourism can bring to a part of central Wales where there is a continuing problem of depopulation.
The hon. Member rightly spoke of the beauties of our country, and I think that he will allow me to add that there are certain characteristics of the Welsh people which make us highly adaptable and suitable to receive guests and visitors from the rest of Britain and from abroad. Wales is famous for its love of home and equally famous for its hospitality and it is in the type of hospitality which we extend to visitors that we shall make our name.
In speaking of the beauty of Wales and the type of tourism which we are attempting to produce, it is not out of place to mention the work done over the past many years, and I mention the name of Mr. Clough Williams-Ellis and the excellent taste which he has brought to Port Meirion, which is typical of how some far-seeing people have added their weight to the success of Welsh tourism as it is today.
Not long ago, the right hon. Member for Llanelly (Mr. James Griffiths) and I went to see an excellent colour film which described what Wales had to offer in hospitality. I remember the occasion very well. It was at a time when the majority in the House was rather smaller than it now is. On that occasion, the usual channels worked very well and the right hon. Gentleman and I were able to get away from the House for a couple of hours to see this excellent film.
It showed not only our coast and rivers and mountains, but also the sort of fare and hospitality which Wales has to offer in many areas. Films of this sort can be of great value in projecting the correct

image of Welsh tourism, not only in Britain but abroad under the aegis of the British Travel Association and other organisations.
The debate is concerned with the financial and administrative set up of the Welsh Tourist Board. One of the questions which I asked a fortnight ago was what the Government intended to do about the Board, and I reminded the Government that in 1964 the Board was given £40,000 to do some of its work. What the hon. Gentleman has said merely underlines the Board's financial difficulty and no doubt the hon. Lady will be able to say something about that.
On the administrative side, I make only this plea—that whatever changes are envisaged, the Board's membership will still come from a wide selection—wide both geographically and by virtue of their calling—of men and women who understand what tourism is about and what good taste is about. By good taste, I mean good food as well as good architecture. It is also necessary to have on the Board one or two people who are what in rough terms can be described as businessmen or businesswomen.
As the hon. Gentleman said, this is very big business. Not long ago the Welsh Tourist Board undertook an important advertisement exercise at Waterloo Station. Many of us were able to visit it and I am sure we should congratulate the Board on what it did to popularise and advertise Welsh tourism. It was an excellent place to carry out this operation. It is interesting to hear the hon. Gentleman point out, quite rightly that the percentage of British holidaymakers coming to Wales was higher than those going to Scotland.
Our Scottish friends are not here; they have gone north of the Border, by aeroplane, rail or road. It was interesting to hear on the midday B.B.C. news that the only traffic block of any serious consequence in the whole of the country was between London and Wales. Again, this augurs well for Welsh tourism at Easter. I must return to this question of the east-west road. I still believe, not withstanding arguments against it, that we should concentrate on lateral east-west roads, to make it easier for people coming to Wales, not only for tourism but for light industry.
I hope that at some time, when economic conditions are easier, the Government may see their way to giving a high priority to this question of an east-west road, coming from somewhere in the Shropshire area and going out to Cardigan Bay. I often think that we suffer a disadvantage in the geography of our airports. Very often people from overseas, from North and South America, say, "Yes, we are coming to Europe next summer, and we shall spend four days in London, four days in Paris, four days in Frankfurt and go on to Rome."
It is difficult, once sightseers are in London, to get them back to Wales. I hope that I am not talking through the back of my head when I say that there might be an argument, in long-term thought, for producing an airport which would be the next step on from Shannon. I am not saying where it should be in Wales; this is a difficult matter. It would give an opportunity for our overseas friends to see Wales. We should not under-estimate the number of second, third and fourth generation Welshmen living today in the United States, Canada and South America.
I must touch on two matters which are hurting tourism in Wales and to express the hope that the Government may see their way, even in the coming month, to putting one of these two matters right. First of all, there is the Selective Employment Tax. I will not labour it today. The Budget is not far away, but there is not an hon. Member on either side of the House who does not realise the great damage that S.E.T. has done to the tourist industry.

Mr. Speaker: Order. We cannot discuss in detail, on the Adjournment, matters which can be remedied by legislation.

Mr. Gibson Watt: I am grateful to you, Mr. Speaker, for allowing me to refer to it very briefly. I will not go further. I hope very much that this matter will remain in the Government's mind.
There is also the question of development areas. The constituency of the hon. Member for Conway is affected by the present drawing of the development area lines. We know that of all hotel space in Wales 40 per cent. is situated in

Llandudno. It is unfortunate that this area and other areas which depend on the tourist industry are not included in the development area if—and I emphasise the "if"—the development areas are to be as widely drawn as they are.
I touch on these matters because they could greatly help the Welsh Tourist Board in its efforts to increase and encourage tourism in Wales. I hope that the hon. Lady will be able to tell us what success her right hon. Friend has had in talking to his colleagues about financial support for the Board. She may remember that in the debate in the Welsh Grand Committee she said:
My right hon. Friend is having discussions with his colleagues in the Government about a further contribution to the Welsh Tourist Board and arrangements to make a special effort in rural Wales …"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Welsh Grand Committee, 15th March, 1967; c. 540]
I hope very much that she will have something to say on this subject today.
For fear of shortening the tourist season for those Members who have remained in the Chamber, may I conclude that I am grateful to you, Mr. Speaker, for allowing me to say these few words.

4.31 p.m.

The Minister of State, Welsh Office (Mrs. Eirene White): It is perhaps appropriate that the last Adjournment debate preceding the Easter holiday should be on tourism. I congratulate most warmly my hon. Friend the Member for Conway (Mr. Ednyfed Hudson Davies) on his well-thought-out, very lucid and extremely well-informed speech. He has done a great service to the tourist industry in Wales as well as to his own constituency by taking this Parliamentary occasion to raise the matter. As my hon. Friend rightly said, there are other parts of Wales in which tourism is of great importance, but it is true that the largest numbers of tourists go to North Wales. I should be correct in saying, I think, that of those who go to North Wales the largest number goes to my hon. Friend's constituency.
I am glad that we have had the opportunity of this brief discussion, although I wish in some ways that my hon. Friend had been fortunate enough to raise this subject, not on this occasion, but a little later, because I am not in a position to reply as fully as I would have wished to


some of the questions which have been put to me. However, I will do my best to make clear the attitude of the Government and, in particular, of the Welsh Office to the tourist industry. We recognise very well that the greatest hope of development for many parts of Wales probably lies in improving their attractions to tourists both from within other parts of the United Kingdom and from overseas.
There has been concern in Wales for some years about the organisation of the Welsh Tourist Board under its various names. There was a very important Report by the Council for Wales when that was in existence, and this was followed by the Cole Report. We are now having further discussions with the Tourist Board as to its future.
It is clear from what has been said, and it is well known to us, that we cannot expect great progress without some further financial contribution. If anyone looks at the latest published report, he cannot fail to be concerned at the financial position depicted in it. I refer in particular to the point to which my hon. Friend drew attention. For the year ending 31st March, 1966, which is the latest date for which we have figures, the total budget was a little short of £60,000. There was an overdraft of rather more than £14,000, which is a substantial sum. It is indeed unsatisfactory that the Chairman of the Welsh Tourist Board should have been put in a position in which he felt that he had to guarantee the overdraft personally as a private individual.
We all appreciate the tremendous public spirit shown by the present Chairman, Mr. D. J. Davies. I would like to take this opportunity in Parliament of paying tribute to him, not merely for this extremely generous action on his part, but also for the quite outstanding amount of work which he puts into a voluntary and honorary position. We are all deeply indebted to him for this.
We are fully aware in the Welsh Office that the situation is not satisfactory and that the finances are not adequate. I wish that I could tell the House this afternoon in exact terms what we propose to do. Unfortunately, I am not in a position to do that. Although the conversations which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has been holding

with the Treasury and with the Board of Trade, who share responsibility with him for this industry, are, I believe, on the brink of a happy conclusion, they have not reached the point at which figures can be disclosed. I can, however, say that it is intended that a substantial increase should be made in the amount of money which will be available for the Welsh Tourist Board and that with this assistance, for the details of which we will have to wait until after the Recess, it will be possible for the Board not only to extend its activities, but also to strengthen its staff.
We all know of the quite devoted work of the staff of the Board, but it is plain to anybody who has paid any attention to what it is trying to do that it cannot do what is needed in Wales without considerable strengthening. We hope very much that the extra resources which are to be made available will make it possible to provide the additional staff of very high quality, which, we are sure, are needed to do justice to the tourist requirements of Wales.
One aspect of finance which my hon. Friend touched upon and to which the hon. Member for Hereford (Mr. Gibson-Watt) also referred is the special grant of £40,000 over a three-year period which was given for research. This money did not come through the British Travel Association but came direct from the Welsh Office. We are, naturally, concerned that this work of research should not come completely to an end at the end of the three-year period. There is still one year to go and arrangements have not yet been made to determine exactly how this work should be carried on or how it should be financed. I assure the House, however, that we are well aware that this is not something which can be done over a three-year period and then be dropped entirely.
Most valuable work has been done under the direction of Mr. Michael Reece, whom some of us know. It is being done not only on a functional basis, particularly concerning accommodation and types of accommodation which are available. Surveys have also been carried out in depth in certain areas of tourist interest and I understand that reports are being made to the authorities concerned.
For example, I shall be going in a few weeks' time to Tenby and I believe that


before I reach there the report of the research unit on the position in Tenby will have been received and it may be possible to discuss it. Caernarvon, Aberystwyth, Bala, Llanidloes and Rhayader are among the places which have been examined and others are about to be examined. These localised surveys can be of special value in the places concerned, so that they can see how they stand in relation to the provision of accommodation, catering standards and in other respects.
I think that this is very necessary and something which must be continued, because, as my hon. Friend said, the pattern of the tourist trade changes and the move towards what it calls self-catering holidays has become very marked indeed over the past few years. If we are to keep abreast of tourist developments, we must make sure that there is adequate accommodation of this kind available, well kept, and at reasonable prices.
As I think all of us know from our own constituencies, people nowadays who previously would have been satisfied with, perhaps, a few day trips in the course of a holiday at the seaside now go abroad. They take their cars to the Continent, and they know very well what is provided for them in France, Italy, Spain, and so on, and they come back very much more critical than they would have been 10 years ago, or even five years ago, perhaps, because the numbers going abroad are increasing year by year.
Therefore, if we are to succeed in attracting more people, as the Chancellor of the Exchequer wishes, to take their holidays at home we must be quite certain that the accommodation provided is of a kind which will compare favourably with what they can find when they go to the continent of Europe.
My hon. Friend asked a number of questions about publicity. Here, I think, we are all in agreement that the overseas publicity should be undertaken centrally by the British Holidays Association, because it would be thoroughly uneconomic for each part of the country to try to do its own. I have here, for example, one of a whole series of very well produced publications on holidays in Britain. It has an excellent section on holidays in Wales. I am not sure that

I myself would have recognised "Walisischer Lachsfischer" as "the Welsh salmon fishers" if that had not ben pointed out to me and "Die Beruhmte Tal-y-Llyn Kleinbahn" is also slightly startling, but I think there is no doubt that Wales has a fair share of the overseas publicity. It is not possible to have a precise breakdown of the expenditure but Wales has £250,000 a year, it is calculated, spent on publicising overseas Welsh holiday facilities.
There is a very difficult problem of publicising Wales within the United Kingdom, and I quite take the point of my hon. Friend when he says that this ought not to be unbiased or impartial, but quite the contrary. I think that the new arrangements made for strengthening the resources of the Welsh Tourist Board will make it possible for it to do even more than it is doing already to provide attractive information about holidays in Wales. There is a series of excellent publications, including a very good one on outdoor activities such as, camping, pony trekking, fishing, mountaineering, walking. I think anybody who could resist the enticing descriptions in it must be very hard to please indeed.
My hon. Friend raised some very much wider questions about the multiplicity of organisations dealing with tourism in Wales, and I appreciate the point that he makes. It is, of course, the fact that there are many bodies which have some interest—Government Departments, the Welsh Office itself, and the Board of Trade. He mentioned also the Sports Council and the National Parks Commission, and there will be the new Rural Development Board, which will have certain responsibilities for improving tourist facilities in designated rural areas, and there are the local authorities themselves, and so on.
It is quite true that more could and should be done to co-ordinate all these various activities. On the other hand, one would be well advised to look carefully before suggesting that there should be one monolithic organisation doing everything—publicity, research, information and also development. I should have thought that there was room for strengthening at the centre, certainly, but that one should recognise that there is some value in having a specialist approach as well.
I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will be very interested in the comments on this matter made by my hon. Friend. I know that he has some ideas of his own of bringing the Welsh Office perhaps a little more in contact with some of these organisations than it is at the moment. I can assure my hon. Friend that what he has said today will stimulate further thought in the Welsh Office about a subject on which we are very much engaged at present.
The hon. Member for Hereford (Mr. Gibson-Watt) touched upon another matter which, as you have pointed out. Mr. Speaker, we cannot discuss in detail. This is the problems raised by the Selective Employment Tax for the tourist areas not only of Wales but of other parts of the United Kingdom.
Mr. Speaker having pointed out that we cannot discuss them in detail, I do not wish to do so beyond saying that we are aware that there have been difficulties in areas which do not receive the manufacturing "bonus", but which are dependent on tourism and on rural pursuits generally for their well-being. That is something on which it is possible that something may he said perhaps before too long—

Mr. Gibson-Watt: Good.

Mrs. White: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will have noticed the guarded phrase which I used.
We are concerned about the well-being of Wales, particularly the rural and coastal districts, and we are very anxious that the good reputation which we have in many respects for our tourist provision should be improved and enhanced. We can all think of certain hotels, restaurants and even small cafés and public houses where we can go with great pleasure knowing that we shall be welcomed and able to enjoy ourselves. These may be such distinguished places as Port Meirion, to which the hon. Member for Hereford referred, being the imaginative conception of Clough Williams-Ellis. Those of us who had a chance to stay there have enjoyed it greatly. However, there are also the more

simple places where one knows that a happy and comfortable time will be had.
On the other hand, there are other places where we are not so likely to be comfortable, well fed or well received. Although the number of such places is diminishing, there are still some. It is in our interests in Wales that there should be none, and that wherever one goes one should be sure of having a warm, clean, well furnished place in which to have a good meal at a reasonable price and receive value for money.
I was delighted the other day to go to Llandrillo, where the North Wales Catering School is held. With members of the Welsh Economic Council, I had an excellent meal, which was well cooked, well chosen and very well served by students of that establishment. This is something that we should all encourage. I hope very much that the local education authorities who are responsible for such things will make certain that we have adequate facilities for young people to be encouraged to go into the catering industry as a skilled profession, as it is, and not as something that one goes into because one cannot think of anything else to do.
Catering is a highly-skilled profession. It is one for which I should have thought our Welsh people were very well equipped. We are hospitable by nature, but we do not always manage to translate that private hospitality into service to the public. Training in catering, and in the hotel profession generally, is something to which we could pay greater attention than perhaps we have done in the past.
I do not feel that I should detain the House from its own holidays any longer. I would have liked to have been able to give the financial details for which my hon. Friend asked. I can only request him to be patient just a little bit longer, when I think that he will have information which should be heartening to him and to all who are concerned with the holiday industry in Wales.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at nine minutes to Five o'clock till Tuesday, 4th April, pursuant to the Resolution of the House of 20th March.